PART I: BEFORE THE SEALING OF THE BLACK MAGE

Chapter 9: The Seven Commanders

Believing that the Overseers had left the world broken beyond repair, the Black Mage intended to destroy the world and recreate it. Knowing that the Overseers could only shape the universe by using the Transcendents as their proxies, the Black Mage sought to remove their influence from the world that he would create by destroying the Transcendents. In this way, he intended for life to restart from scratch, resulting in a perfect society created by complete beings, as the Overseers would never have had any influence in its development.

Though he was standing against a primal power, his sole advantage was that the Overseers, in creating a fixed universe, made it so that all possible futures could be calculated based on known variables. While some mortals possessed the ability to see fragments of the future, the Black Mage was able to take advantage of the fixed variables in the universe in order to divine all the countless futures based on those fundamental laws. In this way, he could manipulate events to ensure that his plans succeeded.

Because of the laws governing the universe, Transcendents were incapable of destroying each other or themselves. To circumvent this, the Black Mage amassed an army of monsters and gathered seven Commanders to lead them:

• The Spirits of Darkness, Orchid and Lotus, became his twin Wing Masters, to whom he also granted the power to manipulate gravity.

• The King of Spirits, Guwaru, was considered to be the Great Spirit amongst his kind. As the Black Mage’s power as the dark Transcendent of Light grew stronger, the powers of Alicia and Rhinne - the Transcendent of Life and Transcendent of Time - grew weaker, shifting the balance of the world. Because of this Guwaru, who was tied to the world itself, grew corrupted and came to serve the Black Mage against his own will.

  (A/N: Before the Milestone update, it was said that Guwaru joined the Black Mage after his anger at the humans who disrespected spirits and nature was exploited.)

• The Red Witch of Azwan, Hilla, was the most beautiful and powerful Shamaness of Azwan. As she continued aging, she feared losing her beauty and power. When the Black Mage came to recruit her, she betrayed her kingdom in exchange for eternal beauty and the power to resurrect the dead. 

• The Nova warrior from the world of Grandis, Magnus, arrived in Maple World from the Interdimensional Portal on Grandis. In exchange for becoming a Commander, the Black Mage gave him greater power.

• The High Priest of the Goddess Rhinne, Arkarium, was once the most devout of the Goddess’ priests until he had a vision of the future in which the Black Mage would reign victorious. Choosing to serve the winning side, he swore his loyalty to the Black Mage.

• The Lion King of El Nath, Von Leon, was a wise man who ruled El Nath benevolently alongside his beloved wife, Ifia. As El Nath was perpetually covered in snow, the kingdom was comparatively poor, though its people were happy. When stories of the Black Mage’s destruction began to spread, the Anti-Black Mage Coalition was formed. The coalition approached Von Leon and requested that he join, but Von Leon refused to involve himself, as he didn’t want to create a target on his kingdom, believing that the Black Mage would leave them alone since the kingdom had little to offer. After being corrupted and driven to insanity by the Black Mage’s forces, the coalition mindlessly stormed Von Leon’s castle, resulting in Ifia’s death. In despair, Von Leon sold his soul to the Black Mage in exchange for the power to exact revenge on those who destroyed his kingdom and his true love.

  (A/N: It’s heavily implied that Hilla is the one who corrupted the coalition, as the Milestone update emphasizes her ability to use illusion magic, and the Winter Bard storyline shows Hilla being the one who recruits Von Leon as a Commander.)

• The Demon, having realized that the Black Mage was planning to destroy Maple World, swore his loyalty in exchange for having the Black Mage promise to ensure the safety of his family. He soon ascended in power and became the Black Mage’s most loyal and powerful Commander.

With his Commanders gathered, the Black Mage gained the forces needed to battle the other Transcendents. However, the biggest problem that remained was how he would be able to destroy himself. In all possible futures, there was no situation in which he, as a Transcendent, could be killed. He knew that he needed to create a being who could change fate, and so he decided to create an Adversary.

Just as in eons past during the Ancient War, a mortal who bonded with a Godsphere would gain a power greater than that of the Ancient Gods and the Transcendents alike. Though he knew that he could create an Adversary, he also knew that they would be the most unpredictable variable in his plan, as the Adversary needed to be pushed to their very limits in order to gain the determination needed to activate the power of the Godsphere. In order to force the Adversary into awakening that power at the critical moment, the Black Mage planned to subliminally influence their decisions.

(A/N: This was done through things like having Lucid manipulate the Gate to the Future in order to show the Alliance that they would ultimately lose. Because of this, the Alliance became all the more determined to find a way to change the future.)

As the Godspheres operated on the collective determination of the masses, he made it a priority to push the world into resisting the idea of a fixed future, as their strong desire would be channeled through the Godsphere as the Adversary championed their strongest wish. Simultaneously, he promised his Commanders a place in his new world order, though he secretly intended to have them eliminated before they realized that he intended to destroy everything. In this way, he would force the people into rallying against him, while also keeping his Commanders in line.

To carry out the Genesis Ritual, the Black Mage needed the powers of creation and destruction, along with a high volume of pure Erdas. To obtain creation and to aggregate a high concentration of Erdas, he needed to create a convergence of the three worlds, which would allow him to not only siphon the Erdas generated from the collision, but also steal the powers of creation from another Transcendent of Light.

As a world without active Transcendents automatically sought out another world to merge with in order to maintain its balance of Transcendents, the Black Mage planned to seal the other Transcendents of Maple World, as well as himself. He began a war of conquest with his Commanders and planned to use them to fight against the other Transcendents, while simultaneously drawing out the very heroes who would seal him.

(A/N: Before the reorganization of Kao’s timeline, the Black Mage’s motivations were significantly different. The original interpretation for his plan was that his only goal was to eliminate the Transcendents, and that the whole idea of destroying and recreating the world was just a pretense to unite the world against him.

The Maple World of his time was described as being filled with selfish, squabbling factions that only cared about themselves, and so by threatening to end the world itself, the Black Mage hoped to become such a looming danger that all these different factions would have no choice but to look past their own personal interests and unite together if they wanted to survive, which would allow for the creation of an Adversary who embodied the will of the people.

Simultaneously, he used the Genesis plan to buy his Commanders’ loyalty by promising them a place in his new world order, although he intended to eliminate the worst of the Commanders so that they wouldn’t threaten humanity once his plan succeeded. From what was presented in the original Limina dialogue, the Black Mage never actually planned to create a new world, as his goal was only the elimination of Maple World’s Transcendents, as well as to reshape society into being led by brave and selfless leaders like the Adversary, Cygnus, Athena Pierce, and many others.

His desire to destroy the Overseers’ hold on the universe wasn’t because they had done anything to harm the world, but because they refused to help repair it. The Black Mage’s belief was that those who hold power are morally obligated to use it in order to help others, and so he decided that by principle, the Overseers didn’t deserve to have such power and call themselves gods when they wouldn’t do anything with that authority, which is why he wanted to eliminate the Transcendents and remove the Overseers’ ability to influence the universe, rather than simply changing society.

Removing the Overseers’ influence wouldn’t actually change anything at all, since they refuse to do anything with all that power, and so the only purpose in destroying the Transcendents was to stubbornly uphold his personal ideals of making it so that indolent and lethargic beings like the Overseers are symbolically stripped of all their authority, while simultaneously placing humanity in a position to replace them as people capable of ruling themselves with justice, rather than the selfish monarchs of his time who enforced institutionalized, fixed oppression because of their greed.

The update that introduced the revamp to Kao’s timeline, which also made several dialogue changes in Limina, significantly changed the Black Mage’s motivations. It explained that the Black Mage had indeed intended to create a new world alongside his plan to destroy the Transcendents, as he believed that humanity was beyond salvation because the moral decay of the world caused by the Overseers creating a fixed destiny ran so deep that it was something that couldn’t be repaired without starting over from scratch.

Because of this, he intended for the Adversary to kill him, and he planned to simultaneously enact the Genesis Ritual at that very moment, which he believed would birth a new, perfect world, as the new life forms that would evolve into sentient beings would be able to live free from the Overseers’ influence, allowing them to develop a society without suffering or evil.

With this understanding, the Black Mage’s plan successfully resulted in the player becoming an Adversary. However, as a result of Tana’s influence, which the Black Mage hadn’t fully accounted for, the Adversary failed to awaken the Seal Stone, resulting in the Black Mage surviving in the new world, meaning that his existence would still allow the Overseers to exert their influence. In order to correct the variables that he hadn’t accounted for, the Black Mage sent the player back in time in order to help their past self course-correct the shape of events. The player who went back in time became known as Kao, a Temple Keeper who lost their memory.

After Kao failed to kill him, the Black Mage began reevaluating his plan and started ruminating about his actions, Kao, and the world itself. While taking another look at the world, he began realizing that people of the present were much braver and more selfless than the people of his own time, as they were able to put aside their differences and fight to protect what they loved. Because of this, he began realizing that in the pursuit of his perfect world, he had lost sight of the value of life and how meaningful it was.

In the current timeline, Kao helps the Adversary fix their mistakes and successfully awaken the Seal Stone, resulting in the Black Mage’s death. Though his original plan was to enact the Genesis Ritual upon his death, after the Adversary chooses to selflessly save Tana’s life, whereas Kao tried to kill her, the Black Mage - who had already begun doubting his plan after seeing that the world has changed for the better - decides that the Adversary is a truly good person who would risk everything to keep everyone safe, and so he comes to believe that someone like the Adversary, who’s leading a world of equally selfless beings, will create a world more perfect than anything than he could create with the power of the gods.

This ultimately results in the Adversary changing the destiny of the world, as their instinctual act of selflessness changes the Black Mage’s mind and results in him choosing to die without enacting the Genesis Ritual, thus leaving the people of Maple World to fix their flawed world and make it into something better, and with the Transcendents of Maple World removed, the Overseers will have no influence to hinder them from doing so.

Personally, I really don’t like the new change that they made with the Black Mage’s motivations. It fundamentally misunderstands his hatred of the Overseers by mistakenly interpreting it as him resenting them for placing the world on a fixed path for annihilation, even though this makes no sense when the Overseers have repeatedly been mentioned as having done absolutely nothing, either good or bad, to Maple World.

Even if he were to create a new world, the people in that world are just as likely to create inequality as they did in Maple World because at the end of the day, it was human beings who ruined their own world through their free will and their choice to be selfish. And if he truly believed that humans were irreparably broken, then there’s no way that he could’ve ever believed that the entire world would ever be able to unite against him for the sake of the greater good, which is the entire crux of his plan to create an Adversary in order to defeat him.

Even though I really like the idea of the Adversary being a champion that represents the best of humanity, with a simple act of kindness being the thing that topples the convictions of a god, I hate the idea of the Black Mage turning into an idiot who overlooks all these basic facts, especially in light of how effective his plan was in the old version, and it honestly feels like the new version started out with the conclusion and worked backwards to fit everything into that one idea, even when it doesn’t make any sense with what’s been previously established.)