SMITE ...Lore!!! ...First Phase!!!
The 'First Phase' is the anecdotal part of the lore that spans from the game's absolute pre-beta inception, until the final issue of the comics done for it by Dark Horse Comics (a well regarded arthouse, if you're not up to chalk with your /co/ studios).
Owing to the extremely scattered nature of the lore at this time - suffice to say, the lore... it's just messy. Like, if the current lore is scattered, then this 'phase' was like a shotgun to a barn wall in terms of trying to understand what was going on. Nevertheless, scraps have made it into the continuing narrative, so it is somewhat important to cover - so I may as well take the time to cover the lot from this time period.
A key issue with this 'Phase' is that (even after the comics were printed) there's no clear directional throughline with what they were exactly going for at this point; with no less than about 3-4 possible different continuities 'tried out' and decisively made non-canon (and probably many others spitballed behind the scenes), along with trying to hit a general maturity tone they were happy with.
Also, before we begin... there isn't much in terms of directly related music for this phase, so most of the stuff I'll link is just going to be tone-fitting stuff to mull you over. I hope you like it?
But regardless, let us begin;
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Pre-Lore / Non-Canon Attempts
Preface: You can skip all of this part if you want. Clue's in the title, it's non-canon and just here for posterity / explaining why some things aren't canon which you may have thought were.
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In the very first mention of SMITE and Lore in the same sentence; we go all the way back to 2012 (a decade ago, as of writing), where all the the initial / release Gods all had some basic lore snippets, and they had a qt3.14 hapa g0rl do some pantheonic cosplay alongside them; with the tone of the lore generally being along the lines of 'they all run off their mythos, it just works, don't think about it too hard'.
While they did seem to get through all the Gods initially released with the Closed Beta, most have been lost to time itself (only a few posted on their Youtube, there to this day), and I can't find any archive of the stuff aside from a few leftover episodes and forum conversations implying that they happened (this is so far back that Gangnam Style was still new and in-joke meme, and back when SomethingAwful was a semi-prominent place of discussion; pre-troon infestation, takeover, then suicide so basically like most things related to trannies).
In this sense, HiRezKama (the said qt3.14 hapa g0rl) was our first lore lady... but would be quickly replaced ( :( ) by the Lore Lady who still gives us commentary today, nearly a decade down the line - Suehyla El-Attar.
It's actually very early on / right now (yes, 2013) that the overall 'canon' lore starts... but there's a very distinct reason why I'm skipping over it right now and leaving it to the Core Lore, later on. Let's just cover the non-canon stuff right now.
You'll..... you'll just understand when we get there.
From here, the tone of the game lore was very relaxed.
Almost Machinama-y.
No, wait, literally Machinima-y
There was official SMITE amateur Machinima that acted as in-mythos-based shitposts of how the Gods might interact comedically in-engine / out-of-bounds; compounded with standalone in-character passages. Most have been lost to time / without archive, but of the few I could scratch up... well we're not really missing anything groundbreaking (eg the Diary of Tyr, which basically describes him on the Old Assault Map and getting used to fighting alongside Fenrir across a few entries. The below image is from that entry; to almost exemplify the 'importance' and afterthought-tier quality of it all).
This stuff was almost definitely done by the interns - maybe the Machinima had some more effort behind it - but the main take is that absolutely nothing here was carried forward; essentially on the level of in-game character voiceline interactions. If that.
This continued until 2014, when the first second cinematic trailers began to drop. During this period, we got increasing mentions of the 'why' reason the game exists in-Universe (again, all summarised into the Core Lore part further below), however the following are non-canon attempts and dropped plotlines.
The 'teaser' trailer was more like a character-intro than anything standalone, with a malformed looking Fenrir and Neith, an accurate Thor and a more face-painted-up Guan Yu just doing random things and looking cool. Literally a trailer for the trailer.
Link to said 'Teaser': https://youtu.be/NzjKW1kOucM
This directly leads into a pretty generic 'fight' trailer; set in a generic ''ancient volcano-ey city-in-a-cave'' setting (Fenrir's first 'howl' being obviously 'voiced' by guy who really wasn't putting as much effort as he could in, just some weirdo growling into a shitty mic) and honestly looking more like a tech / SFX demo than a real lore push.
Link to said Trailer: https://youtu.be/9IZTss4ud1k
tl;dr Neith vs Fenrir -> Fenrir Wins -> Fenrir BTFO by Thor just in time -> Thor vs Guan Yu -> Thor wins -> Ymir ENTERS -> Trailer over.
The tone was much darker in the literal sense, and the atmosphere a far more 'realistic' take than we have now - but otherwise there's nothing much to go off other than 'this is an advertisement'. Inferably it seems like early foreshadowing that they wanted to go with Ragnarok being the overarching antagonistic concept (given the heavy focus on Norse Gods and Thor being present in most promotional material, it could be said he's the MC at this stage - but honestly, 'MC' of what?); however I can't find much else about what their plans were here, and I can only assume this was either scrapped or was incorporated into a later lore attempt. Hades may have also been intended to show up in a later trailer still, as you can see in the concept / promotional art made below, but nothing came of it.
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After about a year of bros...I just realised the qt.314 hapa gorl is like a decade older now than she was then.... ;_; fuck... my heart... silence i need a gf... from Lo-Rez, they came SMASHING back on the scene to cosplay as a 2D for me, fuck 3DPD in 2015 yeah, 'you thought', bitch with the 'Battlefield of the Gods' standalone comic a brand new cinematic, and murmurings of a more 'decisive' lore push.
Sadly, from what I could see of archives of the time, there were quite evident issues and arguments in-studio (likely the gunshots of Lo-Rez finding new and intuitive ways of shooting themselves in the foot; possibly likely because they had two outsourced companies with wildly different plans and direction clashing on what to do with the lore) and as a result, the admittedly impressive looking 'To Hell & Back' cinematic for SMITE dropped, having already been made non-canon a month prior by the beginning of the publishing of the Pantheon War comic mini-series (further below), that would also invalidate the Battlefield of the Gods; being the chosen early plotline of the lore-narrative that has been continued until today.
To clarify both 'Battlefield of the Gods' & 'To Hell & Back' are decisively non-canon.
From the top;
The standalone Battlefield of the Gods comic has Iphianassa saved by Athena (tl;dr Iphianassa was a literal who named Greek water nymph in-mythology, don't expect her getting in-game) (Ever.), after her 'friends' turn out to be Chinese-style demons who try to kill her when Homer (the greek poet one) tells her that she's a divine being and gives her a QRD on a small portion of the (at the time) already established Core Lore.
Honestly, nothing of note happens, most of it is just spent advertising the game / Gods like a promotional comic you'd get at a cinema / fast food place. Even the cover has nothing to do with what happens during it. I'd say the demons closer resembled Japanese Oni than Chinese Yaoguai, but the nips weren't in the game at the time.
Very skippable.
Looks nice though - they definitely got their moneysworth from getting Black Horse on it, and then the Pantheon War series later.
Shady link - skip it if I were you: https://viewcomics.co/smite/issue-full
Again, if it gets nuked, I will illegally distribute with full and deliberate disregard for any international or domestic law 'find another link' myself.
For To Hell And Back, you will probably take different things from it depending on how much you know about what's going on;
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- To an outsider watching it as an advertisement cinematic, it's just a trailer fight with no real logic behind it. The tomboy, the ice guy and the assassin guy are evil after being corrupted by some volcano-demon, and then they fight Sun Wukong, Thor and some egyptian girl. Cool fight scene, the end, play the game advertised plz.
- To the surface-level retard it's ACKSHUALLY Bellona + Ymir + Loki defeating a slightly modified design of the Fire Giant, then beating an enemy team of Thor + Sun Wukong + Neith with FG buff. Aggressors win and head toward Titan, defending team respawns at the end. Shots are mixed up to throw the flow of the story off, but it's pretty clear in retrospect.
There isn't a take outside of 'outsider' or 'surface-level-retard', that's it, you get to pick only one to align yourself with. Really not that complex, all things considered.
It does seem to bounce off of the line-of-narrative from the previous two teaser cinematics by the same studio - inferably Bellona + Loki aligned themselves with Fenrir, Guan Yu and Ymir (we've got a full team!) who then go on further into the Volcano-city-thing from the first trailers to deal with the Fire Giant. Off this line of logic, Sun Wukong joined Thor and Neith before they went to defend Olympus - but again (again) (again), nothing came of this narrative line.
Moral of the To Hell And Back cinematic: Hard CC wins teamfights. Related gif is probably the best part of it.
If you wanna watch it, here's ya li- .... wait why is there 2 links?
I'm glad you asked!
Fun fact: They had to take down the original 'To Hell and Back' trailer from their main channel because they 'forgot' to renew the license for the music on it - so now instead of "Sockets" by Slaves, the one on the official channel has some severely tone-shifted orchestral tune to it that changes the entire vibe from a fun battle to a spr srs bsnss tragedy.
Lorefag's reccomendation: the Sockets one is better than the Orchestral. It's the same animation otherwise.
Original Trailer via Gamespot, with Sockets: https://youtu.be/khsjzariacQ
Nu-Trailer, with Orchestral (for posterity): https://youtu.be/xlHU9AKCfGE
My inner schizo is speaking to me though, and they're saying that it's possible that they removed it because of the bands name... Slaves - don't forget that current-year LoRez are the same retards that banned 1/3rd of the population of one of their biggest games because of gamer words, and To Hell and Back was made back when LoRez was mostly white guys and tech-asians / still based; pre-pozz. They never released any statement on the matter, so my pet schizolorefag alter-ego's theory is for you to decide.
In-development for To Hell and Back, there was an in-house emphasis on getting a more 'realistic' take on slapstick / visual characterization on 3D models, over the stiffer faces and fights of other high-end cinematics of the time (not just SMITE's main and only competitor in the very specific 'MOBA-cinematic market' at the time, League of Legend's New Dawn, but generally across the cinematics of the vidya industry). That, and they had to basically make a new physics engine to simulate the magma flow throughout (modelling it's adaptive viscosity, as the liquid cools with heat while clumping up, because it's rock and not water).
Oh, and if you're a newfag who doesn't get it when it happened, Loki's puddle used to be a minion taunt that exploded after a delay, not a AoE DoT blind; which is what he tricks Thor into phasing through in the cinematic. In-game this would essentially allow him to trick minions and score his Passive on them, and allow him to single-handedly run down an entire lane by himself while taking minimal damage if given the opportunity (hence why he was the colloquial King of the Split-Push despite being shit at it now, to the displeasement of Loki mains everywhere).
For more behind-the-scenes stuff regarding cinematics going forward, while the UK-based studio (RealtimeUK) got them good results for the trailers above, it was too expensive to commission time and again, so they would move to in-engine cinematics {for Phase 2 Part 1}, before finding an absolute gem of a Malaysian studio (Glow Productions) that they've been using up until the time of writing {Phase 2 Part 2 and beyond}. To make this clear - THEY DID NOT SHARE MODELS. The models seen in the stuff above (because programming-compatability / corporate greed / something else) do not feature in the Glow Productions cinematics, and this is exemplified by Bellona uniquely having two entirely different cinematic models.
Lorewise..... none of the cinematics (before and after this point, from Realtime, in-Engine and Glow) are 100% accurate canon; but instead can be treated like interpretations of events from the Lore. Main reason being time & budget - it's easy to write 7 characters into a scene; it's harder making a custom model and animating it; understandable in that regard.
Have some concept art. Everybody likes concept art :) You better fucking like concept art. All of the above was non-canon anyways - so, what a waste of time, eh?
To finish up with the pre-Lore and 'set the tone' of Phase 1, I'll also go into our first map interlude, for the various pre-Lore Conquest maps. Oh, wait, let's switch to italics, since I'll be personally adding and commenting with these throughout the lore, when relevant.
While not vitally canon, most of the maps in the game observe a given in-lore conflict, and have numerous details which may or may not be relevant. I'll pepper these interludes throughout the docs (even if the maps have no lore attached), both as an excuse to post concept art (especially if you weren't playing back then, and don't understand the art / atmosphere of the game at the time) and as a way to tell you interesting details about the artistic / thematic evolution of the various modes.
And what better way to start, than to catch you up on SMITE's premier mode, Conquest... through the ages!
As you may be aware, SMITE was / is the late-bloomer to the MOBA party - nearly a decade after 2003's Defence of the Ancients, nearly half a decade after 2009's League of Legends - the initial release locking horns with the release of DotA 2 in 2013 (which it was, unsurprisingly, crushed under).
Initial iterations were from the design philosophy of conventional MOBA maps, with the first ever plan for a Conquest map below being drafted in ~2010 (at the time it wasn't even called Conquest - it was just the 'normal' mode, with no other gamemodes to compete with it). The issue here was visibility - from the getgo SMITE intended to depart from the genre as a third-person MOBA; yet the angular and short sightlines made for a clunky experience, and the map was quickly shifted into something more reminiscent of today. The hexagonal shape was more intuitive to being able to see down a long lane, without revealing too much information as the lane curved.
By 2011, a playable build had emerged, and the game was shown off for the first time at the PAX Prime of that year. This included the first ever concepted Gods in-house (Anubis / Kali / Odin / Ymir / Zeus) that were built off of the remains of Global Agenda 2, alongside 4 'new' Gods (Bastet / Hades / He Bo / Sun Wukong {Hun Batz}) for the presentation. Also, yes - it wouldn't be until the first iteration of the Closed Beta (Agni / Ao Kuang {Kukulkan} / Arachne / Artemis / Ra / Hel / Sobek / Vamana) that a Hunter would be in the game.
As of today, Anubis and Ymir have the oldest mechanically untouched kits in the game respectively; while Artemis has the oldest untouched Default model in the game (which is why she has no jaw animations on her base face - she has no texture for the inside of her mouth).
While I'll elaborate on most of the pre-beta map below (since it entered the Closed Beta almost untouched), the key detail not seen later was that the Kraken (later seen as Poseidon's Ult) took the place of the Gold Fury of today.
In it's first publicly playable iteration within the Closed Beta of early 2012, Conquest was almost an oval-map. Features included an extremely wide jungle, notable side-jungles, not all that many mid-map camps, no EXP camps whatsoever and the two Jungle bosses (the Big Ass Fury and the Fire Giant) were entirely enclosed within thick walls.
In terms of the skybox, the place was relatively foggy and enclosed within a crater of some kind, while a large overhead moon illuminated the map. The Jungle had variable-width pathing - some routes taking you through wide clearings, others through narow pathways. Two internal 'Jungle lanes' passed in the middle of the lanes and by the Jungle Bosses, being the main route from which the Jungle was traversed and what most lane entrances led to. The map aesthetically was quite dull / rocky, both Duo and Solo were mechanically / physically identical (to the point the gamemode better ran as Duo / Mid / Duo, no Jungler - God classifications and Starter Items weren't even a thing back then), and there wasn't much to differentiate either team, with both Titans being an identical Minotaur and with identical scenery. Oh, and the bases were fucking huge.
Featurewise, if the game started to drag on, the Minotaurs would actually leave their base, and attack each other in the centre of Middle-lane, forcing out a match end. Also - the fountain was actually a fountain, with water running under the player spawns.
The first of the changes would be replacing the Kraken pit with the Big-Ass-Fury's lair, and having the Mino-Titans remain more static (no longer 'running it down' to end a game). With time, the Big Ass Fury became the Gold Fury, more wildlife was added to the scenery (such as a large serpent in the swamp behind the Gold Fury) and various balance tweaks. It's from this point that the game was then renamed to 'Conquest' - with Arena and Joust been released, and Domination in the works.
As of writing, the developed October 2012 version of this map (ie, the point Conquest 'became' Conquest) has been made playable as an optional mememode - 'Classic Conquest'. Even if SMITE NIGHT ends, you'll still probably be able to tour this map alone in a custom game if it interests you. Spoiler: It's not very good compared to what you're used to, and was phased out for a reason.
If you're wondering, the below screenshot is taken from the external jungle-lane entrance at the top-left of the map, closest to the Yellow Shield camp.
Over the course of the beta, this map would evolve in various ways.
In it's first major 'revision' in December 2012, the sidelanes were removed and their related buffs were either thrown out with it, or into the now wider central Jungles (which now came complete with the addition of EXP camps), while the bases were now distinctly Greek in theme (as well as being somewhat compact than the previous cavernous iteration). On top of the sky being brightened up with a clear, sunny day and the overall tone of the map being less gloomy, the map became divergent - with one side having autumnal forestry to indicate enemy turf (however it was still fundamentally just Minotaur v Minotaur).
How about we call this one..... 'Autumn Conquest', yeah, I'm naming them as I go along, because it's not like anyone else bothered to at the time as it was still in the Closed Beta, but definitely distinct from Classic Conquest.
As the game left Closed Beta into Open Beta come January 2013, this Autumn Conquest received a major art update to further fit the 'two-sided' nature of the map. Textures were improved all around and more details were added (such as Jungle camps literally having camps and furnishing next to them, instead of just being small clearings). The Fire Giant Pit gained additional entrance (which was what started the ball rolling on the Jungle Bosses having open areas) and the map was finally made divergent - Red team vs Blue team (even though it was visibly Orange v Blue). Again, still just Minotaurs, but baby steps, baby steps.
Come late June 2013, the Conquest map would yet again be reworked - the major change being that the Jungle lanes were a more uniform width (no more thin corridors and internal-lanes). Jungle Bosses were made even more open-air, however the map was squashed and elongated into something more reminiscent of the map you know of today. Towers were still uniformly distanced from one another (so Solo lane and Duo lane were indistinguishable), but the addition of yet more harpy / EXP camps within the Jungle on top of dedicated Jungle items allowed for the Jungler role to begin to be played in a dedicated fashion - the 'meta way to play' now finally recognisable, as the Duo / Mid / Jungle / Solo you know of today.
Like before, this was chased up with a major art rework (August 2013) - this time making the sides completely divergent from one another, including the first time each lane had distinctly different 'distances' between the towers, to further benefit the Duo-Mid-Solo concept.
No longer Red v Blue, the map was now 'Pristine' vs 'Destroyed' or as we'll run with calling it, Alpha-Omega Conquest (since those were the symbols on the various banners). The entire map was no longer surrounded by walls (of a presumable dormant volcano), and instead was placed next to the sea for the first time, opening up the skybox. Alpha-side was still set in the same distinctly Greek Acropolis, however the Omega-side was set in what appears to be a multi-layered arena (not to be confused with Arena) at the base of an erupting volcano - meanwhile the Fire Giant Volcano was opened up entirely into the Fire Giant Pit. Contrast was increased across the map to improve combat visibility with other Gods, and shrubbery was removed from the lanes to make it clearer where boundaries were.
Also, you may recognise the throne at the back of the destroyed-side - as it still features today in end-of-match Win-Loss screens, with Gods from Odin to Chernobog to Tiamat using it as an asset.
As for the rest of Chaos-side, narratively, the manifestation of this volcano is technically the trigger event of the entire narrative; as it's the dead souls due to it's eruption which sets Anubis and Hades against each other, later when we reach the lore. The volcano itself is aesthetically designed after the Sicilian Mt. Etna, which would imply Typhon, God-King of Monsters is our current shadow-mastermind of the lore (intended or not), but paradoxically, this Volcano is later supposed to represent the erupting forces of an ongoing Ragnarok that led to the Destroyed / Omega side....... while also being the trigger point that would lead to Ragnarok itself starting............. j-just don't think about it too hard......
Unlike it's predecessors, this map was where the 'vision' for conquest was set in stone, and thus stuck around for a while, through the end of the Open Beta and throughout Season 1. The map would however receive various updates - Towers were made more visually divergent again, jungle camp Harpies and Cyclops's got a visual update, since they were still using Closed-Beta models (the Harpies from that change are still the ones being used today, but the Gold Fury was literally just a scale-increased Golden Harpy) and last but not least, in January 2014, the Minotaurs were BTFO, and in their place, the Titans were brought in - as well as finally bringing Conquest (and every other map in the game) to Order v Chaos (even if the map was still Pristine vs Destroyed / Alpha vs Omega).
And it stuck pretty well from there. Upon release / leaving Open Beta (March 2013) and throughout Season 1, Conquest's major changes for the next year would mostly just be numbers and camps being moved around - no major layout changes
Well, no major changes until February 2015 - the Season 2 Rework.
Textures around the map were yet again improved, this time with a vision focusing on 'grandeur', making both sides even more distinct from one-another, and making the place feel more 'lived in'. Various Greek-styled houses were placed throughout the map, and the entire map took on a general Mediterranean theme (for example, the Fire Giant pit was no longer an isolated Volcano, but a ruined temple clearing). Dynamic lighting was introduced, the skybox became more animated, and the scenery overall was made less static.
The Jungle bosses got special treatment, with the NEW AND IMPROVED™ Gold Fury being the 'mascot' of this map, stationed in a Roman-style pit (and, what I'd probably name the map after, if it weren't easier to just call it S2 Conquest). The Gold Fury would tour across each lane pre-match (starting from her perch in the middle of Mid lane), before circling around the skybox until she 'spawned' in by simply landing in the playable area. Chaos-side had a fuckton more magma added (especially visible in Solo lane) meanwhile Duo-lane's beach had a huge amount more detail added (to the point you may still hear about it today - it was pretty popular).
Order-side base was again, still styled after a Greek Acropolis, but now given greatly increased elevation so it could be seen from across the map. Meanwhile, Chaos-side's base received a complete overhaul, with active magma floes across the entire side and with a statue of {Something} overlooking their fountain. It looks like Typhon, I want to say it's Typhon, and I'm pretty sure it's Typhon, but I can't find a decent quality picture of the full statue by itself (let alone documentation or dev notes), and don't want to feed you headcanon bullshit. While there are tidbits of information about the map - all things considered, remaining info is pretty sparse, since was nearly a decade ago.
In terms of gameplay, this was the map where both Jungle Boss pits were fully opened up - meanwhile lanes were for the first time given individual balancing focus, with brawl-y Solo lane having its towers moved closer together so Solo's didn't have to travel as far to meet the minion wave, and to distinguish it from the push-and-pull of the ranged-focused Duo lane (moreso than before). This also introduced the mechanic that both Jungle Bosses now had visual indicators that could be seen across the map for when they were active - Fire Giant having a plume of volcanic smoke, the Gold Fury, a ray of glittering sunshine.
And for the first time, this map came with a dedicated map-trailer even if it doesn't show off Chaos-side all that much! And the Gold Fury is our tour guide! https://youtu.be/4CkrAcVSkOs
Additions from here were relatively limited from 2015 (Season 2) until January 2018 (Season 5) - the only real changes of note being that the Jungle had the Void camp / Purple buff added to further bolster the 'Duo' lane's identity, the Oracle Harpies were added to the Gold Fury (first as minor mobs under the Gold Fury itself, then in their own camp across) and finally the addition of the Portal Demons across from the Fire Giant (again, first as minor mobs, but then consolidated into it's own minor Jungle boss).
As the predecessor to the Pyromancer, when the Portal Demon Boss was defeated, it opened a portal from the back of the mid-lane minion spawn directly to the Fire Giant, with the intention that you could defeat the minor boss at the Fire Giant pit with ease, then everyone could head back to the fountain at once and then be fully recovered + item'd up, for a 5man team taking on the Fire Giant in more favorable conditions. You can see those same Portal Demons / Imps today - Surtr uses the little fuckers as his minions.
Finally, on the topic of 'interesting facets', there was at some point plans for the Hindus to occupy the Order side of a Conquest map in some way - and went as far as a design for their base, but was scrapped later to keep it Olympus vs X, for Season 2. While they do get some of a map much later to themselves (come S9), it's interesting to see this so early on. Perhaps there were plans of an adaptive map, shifting to the Pantheon which had the most reps on a given team? Who knows.
If you're worried about these map interlude lengths - don't worry, these will generally be shorter in the future, and limited more to Lore. I'd say the above, in terms of covering 5 maps over 3-4 years in SMITE's main gamemode, is about as streamlined you're gonna get.
I can't say the same for the Asides. Some of them are pretty big.
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Foundational + Core Lore / The Elysian Uprising
As alluded to, it's false to assume that the lore starts from the Pantheon War Comics, it actually starts much, much earlier, and a lot has been lost to time. Confusing as it may be, many snippets of early lore, both from in-game stuff and out-of-game interviews, were carried through into the lore we're running with today; and sets up much of the foundation for the entire SMITE Universe.
I'm fine with you not understanding why I've delayed it until this point... see, to understand the lore, you really need to read the explicit lore introduction.
Which is in Chinese.
Yes, SMITE had solid ties with Tencent in it's early years (and is arguably how it slingshotted itself into enough funding for relevance, with some of the first properly high quality card arts like Chaac or Chang'E being made by our slant-eyed frens). While LoRez's horse is now firmly in the State of Georgia, USA, pandering to the BlackRock and WEF SJW cartels - beforehand, it was equally a Chinaman thing pandering to the Chinese markets & the CCP (back before it was cool to sell out to the Chinese for MASSIVE DAMAGE PROFITS - LoRez once again both ahead of the curve and shooting themselves in the foot).
And, it's in these very Chinese trailers that we get the overall backstory into the Universe and how things work... and basically all the unanswered questions you may have regarding the setting, if you were reading without knowing. The few English translations were.... dogshit 'sub-optimal' and didn't even cover all the material released - to the point you'll miss out on more than half of it, even if you were aware of this obscure facet of the lore and had tracked them down yourself.
Thus - I've gone ahead and sorted it all out for you, including the material that was never properly released to the West (which is where much of the inaccuracies from the Pantheon War comics come from - not all of them, just most of them).
Enjoy~
The following section is the entire foundational setting of SMITE. The lore continually overlooks that this hasn't been congregated into one place and simply assumes you already know it (because retardation). I'm different. I'm drawing your attention to it here and now.
Pay attention, autist.
We enter in on the rough start of the Divine Realm. As Mortals regain gain sapience, they being begin to believe in things, and with the 'power of belief' (henceforth, Worshippower), these things they believe in begin to slowly manifest into formes of their own. Gods!
Obviously interested in their power source, these beings come down from the Divine Realm in the form of avatars, helping and protecting their followers and begin exerting their supernatural powers, to net themselves either even more followers or more convicted belief (each of which, a greater source of this 'Worshippower').
At this point, everybody's happy just doing their thing in their own areas, and the contents of most world mythologies take place.
While the 'avatar' aspect of the lore is basically ignored from here on out, outside of scarce reminders here and there, it's the official explanation as for why the in-game models are all a uniform size, and at times much smaller to their in-lore counterparts. It's not particularly applicable to Gods like Thor or Apollo; but in the case of Ymir, Geb, Fenrir and other giants - it's the 'avatar' of that God on the battlefield, there to ...SMITE!!! mortals.
It's also a loose explanation / workaround for the rule in many mythologies where looking upon a God's 'true form' is instant death for Mortals, such as the legend of Zeus & Semele - again, it's not the God, just their avatar in the battlefield.
So a few eras pass.
Yet all is not good in the hood.
Now we have the Elysian Uprising kicking off, a mortal rebellion / world war at some indeterminate point, over three reasons:
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- More humans also means more traders, adventurers and explorers; which means more contact between cultures. Some try to sincerely spread their practices as the 'correct' way to do things for the Gods, but ultimately, international affairs ends up as explorers seeing others praying to false idols that must be torn down.
None of the Gods particularly like their idols being desecrated. - As more mortals begin to hold more beliefs, this increases the amount of Gods (and more importantly, Pantheons), and thus detracts from the total share of Worshippers among humanity; creating tension between the already established Pantheons. Mortals are limited, and manufacture themselves at a slow rate - Gods and Pantheons can comparatively manifest much quicker.
None of the Gods want their Pantheon's slice of the Worshippower pie cut into.
And... the core reason that the entire conflict of SMITE began, all the way from the Pre-Beta... which unlike the above two trigger points, is never mentioned in the comics or thereafter again... and assumes you were aware of lore from around a decade ago... {drumroll}.....
- Some mortals are tired of being pushed around with natural disasters or just being treated like trash because of these damn Gods, so they decide to go full fedora and attack either some (or all) of the Gods by themselves.
Some of the localised cataclysms that spilled over into the mortal world were as a result of events in mythology (for example, the Heavens falling down over the Chinese - or the Greek Titanomachia, Gigantomachia then apparently worst of all for the mortals, Typhonomachia) while some others were as a direct punishment from the Gods themselves as a result of events in mythology (such as Mayans being left to die numerous times or the Egyptian Destruction of Mankind). Some cataclysms were even bigger, as if the entire Divine Realm was in conflict, and by the end of it the mortals would be set back to the stone age and wouldn't even hear from the Gods for centuries, if not millennia. We learn more about what I'm pretty sure are supposed to be these kind of events later. Either way, these few mortals are not happy, and what is clear is that the many conflicts and catastrophes in the Divine Realm have devastated the mortal world many times.
The devout on the other hand, resist these God-attackers - seeing the disasters as a fair trade for the blessings, boons and protection in return. Of course those in the wrong would see punishment against them as unfair - much like how a criminal would resent their imprisonment. For all the good the Gods have done for them, the forgotten reasons for the forgotten cataclysms must clearly have been somebody's deserving fault.
- More humans also means more traders, adventurers and explorers; which means more contact between cultures. Some try to sincerely spread their practices as the 'correct' way to do things for the Gods, but ultimately, international affairs ends up as explorers seeing others praying to false idols that must be torn down.
The Gods are split down the middle on this. Some want to bitch-slap or brainwash humanity back in line with even more natural disasters or divine forced-entry cults, bringing back the Order that used to be. Others either sympathise with the mortals or exploit the conflict to their own ends, sowing the seeds of Chaos. Not just 'le gud guise vs le badd guise', there's 'some' nuance to it.
If you haven't noticed, this is the reason why the sides of the in-game maps are named so. The game itself is named after the Gods deciding to SMITE!!! the rebellion, and it's why you usually have human minions run down your lanes. The more domineering Gods such as Zeus, Odin and Anubis sided with Order; the human-ended Gods like Thor, Neith and Athena sided with Chaos; while the tricksters or purely self-centred Gods such as Loki and Sobek fought neutrally, leaning on the side of Chaos. There were numerous unmentioned side-switches throughout this apparent setup phase and the overall tone in the divine realm was similar to the Trojan War - amongst their Pantheonic peers, the Gods may or may not have been on speaking terms depending on alignment and personality, but the gloves were off when it came to foreign Pantheons.
This is the setting lore for the Closed Beta, Open Beta, Season 1, Season 2 & Season 3. Lots was ruled out and made non-canon - this is what remains from that period as canon as the entire backstory of SMITE.
And it's in the midsts of this Divine Rebellion - 'The Elysian Uprising' - that's been going for ??? years (a long time at least, just the state of things at this point), that we begin our lore. The Gods fighting within the Mortal Realm by proxy, using their avatars on the battlefield when needing to take direct action.
If you just wanted the basic pretense of the game, an ultimate tl;dr - this is it - the rest builds on / departs from this. Now read it all again. Foundation lore is foundational.
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The Pantheon War
The comics themselves cover 'most' of what goes on for this phase, but there are some parts that are skipped over / were added in post. Aaaaaand yeahhhhh.... it's to the point there's some pretty notable story elements that are either flat wrong, missing or retconned if you were just to read the comics raw. I've patched up when appropriate - don't worry, I'll clearly tell you when it happens (predominantly preferring the studio-released lore over the comics, because the credited writer for Pantheon War has never been cited as working under LoRez, and thus likely was the one making mistakes / undiscussed alterations instead of Lo-Rez themselves).
You can click the link I've thrown into one of these fucking docs for a pirated version, and if it gets taken down, I'll throw up a direct download link myself, and if that gets taken down, I'll throw up a decentralised torrent for it; fuck any attempt at censorship, copyright is a spook and destroys creativity definitely buy the comics through legitimate mercantile venues if you want to check them out for yourself - but I'm warning you - you're gonna need to read below anyways to make sense of the stuff that comes after.
woooooooah brooo what's this how did it get here wtf?!?!?!?: https://viewcomics.co/smite-the-pantheon-war/issue-1/full
Also, things are going to get much faster and much more concise now (this is a lore summary, after all). The derailment is mostly saved for the Asides; skip them or come back to them later if you don't want to be disrupted.
Finally, you may notice that Athena and Ares (two major characters for the early lore) are still using their original / Classic designs at this point - just roll with it.
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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ {No related music, so have a nice reading-music track to put on loop} ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
The only notable event before this arc / the story proper, is that it's simply implied at a later point that The Morrigan is the one who at some indeterminate point first freed Loki from his mythologically eternal, Snake-BDSM torture - which kickstarts the entire Elysian Uprising / Pantheon War off, as his scheming is implied to have been what causes the initial Elysian Uprising, amidst the sporadic eruptions obliterating mortal settlements.
the morrigan eh?... what a bitch...
So the Elysian Uprising / Core Lore rages on, in the form of purely human skirmishes for a while (*ahem*, the closed beta until about Season 4, or before the lore really started to get developed during Season 5 Ragnarok Conquest map in 2017 *ahem*)
All until the major event of Anubis switching sides - moving from Order to Chaos - to help the Greek Dead who have been piling up on his banks. Hades (on the side of Order) wouldn't allow the violent ones who were fighting against the Gods cross over the Styx and find rest after their due century of waiting, as they presented a danger to the already-dead in his realm, and he didn't need the Elysian Uprising spreading to the Greek Underworld. This left them to wander in agony to the next nearest Pantheon, which was now getting in Anubis's way, who had only really been apathetically involved for Order.
Anubis leads an invasion into Greece and desecrates as many temples to Hades as possible to get the bastard to do his fucking job again. Hades looks to see what's going on, then nearly kills Anubis because home-field advantage. Zeus intervenes (not wanting to really kick off a major war within the Divine Realm itself, the conflict only having been by proxy in the Mortal Realm previously ie, in-game) and an immediate truce is called within the Divine Realm. Zeus is established as a prominent figure in the Divine Realm, and while nobody's tried taking him on directly, he commands enough power and respect to be able to pull off things like this - Zeus is the defacto top-dog right now, due to him doing most of the legwork for / essentially solo'ing the many Greek Machias. While he was Order-side in the interest of the wider Divine Realm, his position of respect results in him more as a mediator at any table he was at.
As long as Chaos has a Death God, the proxy conflict was pointless (since both sides could resurrect endlessly). Zeus is confident and strong, but not stupid.
Anubis is sent back to Egypt and a truce between Order and Chaos is called - though tensions stay high and it's only by Zeus having the biggest dick in the entire Divine Realm that either side doesn't immediately start tearing at each others throats again.
In the comic it's instead explained that Zeus takes Anubis home for a short-term diplomacy meeting with Ra and that no time passes, which fucks with the long term chronology and worldbuilding, in favor of making it fit into a comic. External lore makes more sense here.
Hades doesn't like this, because Anubis was now treading on his toes floating cloak, and saw the attack and 'resolution' as an affront to his job - Zeus once again bossing him around on matters of the Underworld, that Zeus has no real dominion over (in the comic once again, this is treated as a short-term gripe, as oppose to one of Hades' long term motivations and irritations within the conflict, that is background for his 'true' motivation).
Zeus decides that he'll need to call a proper "Council of the Gods!" soon, to set defined lines between the Pantheons. Because if he doesn't, either it won't happen and the current conflict will spiral into a divine Battleground of the Gods! - or somebody weaker than him will try, and will inevitably fuck it all up because they lack the power and aggression to forcibly engineer peace, leading to spiral into a divine Battleground of the Gods!.
Note the very subtle foreshadowing (in more ways than one - keep this one in the back of your head).
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A short amount of time has passed, yet the truce has other implications.
Loki is no longer having fun by dunking on both sides and wants to continue fighting for Chaos. Meanwhile in China, Ao Kuang is pissed off that once again he's being spoken down to and ignored by yet another (after being shat on by both Sun Wukong and Ne Zha in his mythology) and wants to continue fighting for Order, and dominion of his realm - no matter the cost. We've already covered why Hades is pissed (even if there's a secondary / tertiary aspect of his motivation that isn't revealed thought of until Phase 2), and finally, Hel, from all the dead building up in her realm as a result of the war, has popped a blood vessel and begun to switch to her bipolar evil side - which gives her the urge to (you know) free her brother Fenrir and kick off the Apocalypse / Ragnarok.
Hel astral projects to Loki, Hades and Ao Kuang; and the first rendition of the League of Evil League of Best Friends are formed! Personal title. All are on board for their own reasons to start the conflict again and all recognise who needs taking out to start the conflict again - Zeus.
For coming up with such an ingenious plan, Hel wants a few things in return for 'pure-of-saintly-hearted' reasons - she wants freedom from Helheim and wants to borrow McGuffin A the Ruyi Jingu Bang (Sun Wukong's Staff, an ex-pillar from Ao Kuang's palace) & McGuffin B Zeus's Lightning Bolt. There was quite a few variations of who did what because [disjointed lore], but the one I'm running with (that makes the most fluid sense) is the one that has Ao and Hel go for the Bolt, while Loki goes for the staff.
Sun Wukong is pretty easily duped out of the Ruyi Jingu Bang by Loki, who explains that Ao Kuang wants it back on loan momentarily for when a Norse envoy arrives (that Loki was just scouting ahead for). Wukong happily gives it over, and Loki promises he'll get it back shortly. Ao meanwhile quietly busts Hel out of her mythological fog-realm-prison-reality via the various rivers that lead to the sea, avoiding / defeating the Norse wyrms that guard Helheim in the process.
Then the four of them (Hel Support, Solo-ki & JunglAo; Hades mirror Mid as distraction) group up to ga- HOLY FUCKING SHIT ZEUS GETS FUCKING ASSASSINATED BY AO KUANG! *(get used to this in the early parts, it's pretty wild).
Hades, having not been involved with the immediate plot, assumes the Throne of Olympus on assuredly temporary grounds until Zeus ''returns from the Underworld'' from his mystery assassination. Otherwise, the League of Best Friends leave on amicable terms.
After some time has passed, Hel uses her payment, and with the two mcguffins combined, busts Fenrir out of his 'unbreakable' bindings. She tells Fenrir to wait on her to make a few preparations to ensure Ragnarok runs smoothly - namely, getting the Jotunngang in to crash the party. Meanwhile, after it becomes clear Zeus ain't coming back any time soon, Hades explains to the other Gods of the Greek pantheon that Zeus's soul isn't in the Underworld and that some other death god cunt has stolen him away before he arrived, nudgenudgewinkwink probably Anubis.
* In the comics, it basically starts here, with Hel already being out of Helheim because reasons, not needing the Lightning Bolt to bust out Fenrir because reasons, Loki stealing the Lightning Bolt for himself because reasons and Hel telling Hades what to do because reasons. Again, we're skimming over the comic for the most part and sticking to external, as it just makes less sense to fit the pagecount.
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Now for a 'non-canon' bit that actually fits in almost perfectly fine with canon if we remove Athena (which we will).
Zeus is dead, and wakes up at the Gates of the Underworld, as all the dead do. Confused, weakened and having no recollection of the moment of his death, he wanders around a bit, takes advantage of the free time from his absolute dumb-bitch wife (remember this adjective, it's important later) and checks in with the neighbors. There, he catches up with Anubis; who just kinda shrugs and doesn't understand why he'd be there unless somebody killed hi- HOLY SHIT ZEUS GETS FUCKING CHLOROFORM RAG'D WEBBED UP BY ARACHNE, who drags him off with a hoarde of monsters back to the Greek Underworld.
Anubis, watching in surprise + kinda bewildered as to what's going on + still owing Zeus from before, begins to give chase, before Medusa attacks him and forces him to retreat (their two gaze-beams oddly cancelling out instead of Anubis OBLITERATING Medusa). Feeling oddly weaker, Anubis almost gets home, before he sees a huge amount of dead waiting for him at the entrance to the Egyptian Underworld, who all urge him to GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE - IMMEDIATELY!
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Athena, with a huff, decides to go looking around interpantheonic liquor stores for her missing father. Real daddy's girl.
She appeals to the nearby Roman Pantheon to borrow Mercury, who sends her around at super speed to the Chinese (met by the Guan Yu and Sun Wukong on behalf of the Jade Emperor who wasn't in the game at the time, only mentioned in name, who have no clue what happened), the Mayans (no clue), the Hindus (again, no clue) before landing in Egypt. Neith explains that the Egyptians dindu nuffin either, proves it with her magic-y thread-things that Anubis hasn't dealt with any Greek souls since his side-switch to Order, and with Mercury, independently decides it's probably for the best if they help quell any Pantheon getting too big for their boots and starting a war.
They head for their last destination, the Norse.
Ares ain't no bitch who's going to look for answers (keep a tab on Ares, because he's a *fucking madman legend* throughout all the lore in this game), and after a short delay to gather troops, immediately invades Egypt with all his bros in tow, because Hades said it was Anubis, and that makes the most sense to Ares.
On the way from Egypt, Athena and Ares cross paths, and Athena tries to stop him. Ares fucks her off because Daddy isn't around to prefer her any more, and continues with the invasion completely unphased. And by 'invade' I mean 'genocide' with a touch of temple desecrati- HOLY FUCKING SHIT ARES FUCKING KILLS ANHUR!
Ra, concerned that his bodyguard just got killed in an act of blindsided aggression from the Greeks, gets off his sun-boat to see what's going on, and is faced with a huge army of angry Greeks. Ra tries to explain that the Egyptians couldn't care less about Zeus, and refuses to tell Ares where Anubis is.
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Ra tries diploma-HOLY FUCKING SHIT ARES JUST GOUGED RA'S EYES OUT AND BROUGHT FORTH AN ETERNAL ECLIPSE! HOLY FUCKING SHIT ARES JUST WENT ON A WARPATH AND OBLITERATED THE REST OF EGYPT AS PUNISHMENT FOR SIMPLY GETTING IN HIS WAY! HOLY FUCKING SHIT ARES JUST CHAINED RA'S RUINED BODY TO A DESTROYED PLINTH AS A 'REMINDER' TO THE EGYPTIANS NEVER TO GET IN HIS FUCKING WAY AGAIN!
And Ares carries on, because he wants Anubis D E A D. Anubis is now in ultra-hiding because of the previous forewarning, and is waiting for a distraction / escape route to go on the run.
In the comics, Athena arrives on the day of the invasion, gets redirected by Ra to Neith, and Neith tracks down Zeus's Bolt - because page constraints. Anubis is also already gone, despite this conflicting with later additions. For some reason, they also make Mercury into a joke character and semi-coomer.
Hel decides that she needs to get her act on, and to hurry up with the Norse Apocalypse, but Loki's schtick is undermining self-assured plans (with no loyalty whatsoever) and so goes for the undermine. Loki kicks the living shit out of her, steals permanently borrows the Lightning Bolt off her twitching corpse - and only leaves her alive because he's her father (and that's what good dads do to their daughters when they're going through 'that phase'). Loki is all on board for starting the Apocalypse, but actually following through isn't so fun to him, so he continues on his merry way to stir shit, blitzing up the fields of Italy towards Greece.
Cut some time later and when the Athena and co move to investigate the Norse realm, they're intercepted by Loki with the Lightning Bolt, mocki- HOLY FUCKING SHIT LOKI FUCKING KILLS MERCURY! Loki poofs away to hide the Bolt (presumably a personal stash), Athena and Neith have to walk the rest of the way to Asgard (note, a different place to Valhalla), greatly slowing their progress.
Athena definitely believes Loki is the one who killed Zeus now.
Back in Chyna, Ao returns to find Guan Yu and Sun Wukong waiting for him. Ao reluctantly hands Wukong the Ruyi Jingu Bang back, but Wukong asks him what he was using it for. Ao has no idea what he's talking about and gets the story wrong (because Loki deliberately didn't tell him about the lie he fed Wukong). Guan quickly pieces together the link between Athena's envoy asking if they killed Zeus; and orders Ao Kuang to confess.
Ao Kuang confesses, but escapes all the Gods present to his Palace after a struggle, for starting shit with the other Pantheons. From there, he plans to 'weather the storm' in hiding.
This is the biggest disconnect between what was written beforehand and what was in the comic. I'll explain the continuity errors, just roll with it for now.
Hel isn't happy with getting her world-annihilation plans shut down by daddy dearest, and so like a bitch possessed, gathers every member of the Norse Pantheon, and asks them to distract manhunt Loki for beating the shit out of innocent winnocent wickle Hel, while she continues with what she was doing before.
Cut forward, and Loki giggles to himself as the Norse Pantheon and the Greek envoy join up with each other before him, proud of his daughter for out-tricking him, then tells the lot that Ragnarok's probably begun - before being interrupted by Fenrir howling as he tears up a (now undefended) Asgard with a insurmountable army of Frost Giants.
Every God around the world also hears Fenrirs howl as a signal for the dawn of the Ragnarok and thus the Apocalypse, which is their cue to ditch the Zeus-ceasefire and kick shit off with each other again.
The world has become.... a SMITE: Battleground of the Gods!!!
Roll Credits. Phase 1 over.
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Now, for the messy part, to sum up what's different between the two versions of external lore and comic lore (so you understand as clearly as possible going forward into the GN / generally in-game lore).
In the comic Loki is the one to have killed Zeus and immediately takes the bolt for himself, but is imprisoned after his fight with Athena. Meanwhile Ao dies of his own accord after a needless fight with Hel later, having only wanted the Ruyi Jingu Bang for himself. This works for the more condensed narrative, because they didn't have the pagespace to explain the initial Order / Chaos conflict - but it conflicts with later events and mythology, hence why I sided with the external sources.
Ao ultimately doesn't care that much about the RJB in mythology aside from personal pride (that he's professional enough to ignore for the most part), but it's his driving force in the comics. Meanwhile, Loki is set up to be blindly tyrannical instead of subversively 'friendly' because comics like having a Saturday-Morning villain. You can subscribe to either / or with how the lore is, but the comic version of events doesn't work in the future lore additions, as Ao's Underwater Palace is said to be intact otherwise (while destroyed in the comics after Hel / Ao fight for the Ruyi Jingu Bang), and 'Loki' killing Zeus in the comic timeline is for some reason treated as ultimately irrelevant in Phase 2 (because in-house, Loki didn't kill Zeus, it was Ao though it's treated as equally irrelevantly, just less egregious).
Overall, in terms of plot deviations, we've got:
- 'Is Ao's Underwater Palace / the Shui Jing Gong destroyed or not?'
Yes in the comics because Ao dies ¦ No otherwise because Ao does not die -> Continued in Phase 2 as a definite 'No'
- 'Is Ao dead?'
Yes in the comics, because his Palace was dropped on his head and his corpse was dragged ashore ¦ No otherwise -> Continued in Phase 2 as a definite 'No'... but then, much later somehow Yes... It's an outright plothole, just say he's alive, and dies offscreen later, after he shows up
- 'Who Actually Killed Zeus'
Loki in comics ¦ Ao otherwise -> Continued in Phase 2 as 'Nobody cares, Zeus is just dead'
- 'Who has Zeus's Lightning Bolt?'
Hel in the comics ¦ Loki otherwise -> Continued in Phase 2 as 'Heavily implied to be Loki'
- 'What actually happens in-post to the dead Gods to stop them from resurrecting?'
Hades is just being a dick in not helping them out, they're all in the Greek Underworld for some reason and they are making a conscious escape attempt in the comics ¦ Something else (which is a major part of one of the later arcs) otherwise -> Continued in Phase 2 as 'Something else'
At (0 - 1 - 4) (For - Neither - Against) what the comics imply with what's taken forward, you can thank me later for shoveling through shit to find these answers.
It's definitely the messiest part of the lore; and as I've hopefully proven, the comics are guidelines for the lore and not as concrete as they present themselves. It's just something that the Death of the Author needs to fill in / you need to fill in for yourself. At the very least, I've done my best to give the officialy stated versions that patches up everything together logically.
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Either ways, after a long day's scheming Hades sits down on his chair, cracks open a Monster Energy drink for a sip and looks menacingly for a photo opportunity. Hmmmm.....did Hel give him something for later?
WHAT COULD HAPPEN NEXT?!?!
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Continued in Phase 2, Part 1!!!!.....!..!.!!..... https://rentry.co/smgenlorePh2P1
Link back to Portal Doc. https://rentry.org/smgenloredoc
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