I'm interested in a coincidence of terminology between Keyforge and the new 'pitilessly literal' translation of the New Testament by David Bentley Hart (which I think you should you read, as I have, if you are religious or Christian or not or whatever). A translation which has been described as mind-bending, which is a nice way to put it. What are these links?
Archons
The main one is the Archons. In the game of Keyforge you are an Archon, now according to the lore in the new rulebook (which can be found on this page) 'Child gods, or manifestations of a central AI, or transcended mortals, or beings of pure energy'.
You, the Archon, have a deck, made of four houses, which is all the creatures, artifacts and events you have gathered to compete in the world of the crucible. What is interesting is that David Bentley Hart uses Archon a lot in his translation of the New Testament. In particular, translating the letters of Paul (summarised here), he suggests a New Testament theology of
the cosmos has been enslaved to death, both by our sin and by the malign governance of those ‘angelic’ or ‘daemonian’ agencies who reign over the earth from the heavens, and who hold spirits in thrall below the earth. These angelic beings, these Archons, whom Paul calls Thrones and Powers and Dominations and Spiritual Forces of Evil in the High Places, are the gods of the nations.
The world of Keyforge is one of cosmic battle, although the lore does its best to minimise combat and, in the game, collecting Aember, the resource, is more important than combat.
At a more minor level 'Logos' is a house in Keyforge. They are the intellectuals and scholars, again according to the lore, the scientists, divided into theorists and mechanists. Logos is also the incarnation of God as the word, as it is usually translated. For David Bentley Hart, however:
the Word—as a word—does not suffice: He finds it to be “a curiously bland and impenetrable designation” for the heady concept expressed in the original Greek of the Gospels as Logos. The Chinese word Tao might get at it, Hart tells us, but English has nothing with quite the metaphysical flavor of Logos, the particular sense of a formative moral energy diffusing itself, without diminution, through space and time. So he throws up his hands and leaves it where it is: “In the origin there was the Logos …” (see here)
There is no real link here, Logos in the game has the meaning of technology and has no particular 'spiritual' sense. The coincidence just struck me.
Two weird coincidences then? I like think something more could be said. Jean Baudrillard once said “it is by prowling around these soft and acritical notions (like “mana” once was) that one can go further than intelligent critical sociology” (In the Shadow of the Silent Majorities 4).
So, rather than the official concepts of analysis we might get more out of problem concepts, projections, deranged or even 'wrong' understandings, hence Baudrillard's use of the masses. Archons, maybe more than the minor case of Logos, might resonate more in a weird way with the powers and constraints of the game, of our experience, of the cosmic war of Keyforge and the strange cosmic war of the first centuries of what became the 'Christian era'. Maybe, as with WB Yeats, you can draw parallels with beginnings and ends, with rough beasts slouching to be born, or with strange card games that recreate a cosmic war.
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