Douglysium

This is kind of part of a small series I’m making so if you want to check out the last article, in which I talk about werewolves you can find it here(https://douglysium.tumblr.com/post/662623213059276800/the-taste-of-innistrads-werewolves).

Ok, So I know I promised to talk about Spirits or something on Twitter the next time I made one of these but to be honest the Humans on Innistrad have some interesting stuff going on. So let’s see what sort of story or narrative thread we can glean from the color identity of the humans on Innistrad.

Well, first we gotta touch a bit on why the humans on Innistrad tend to be Green-White aligned. In my opinion, humans being White aligned is sort of obvious from several different angles. First of all, in Magic itself, while humans do appear in all colors, like all the time, they do tend to have appeared in White a little more than they do in other colors and the tribe has a White aligned bend in general. If we look at the MTG wiki and add up some of the numbers we can see that about 38.4% of humans have White in their color identity.

This may not sound like a lot, and yeah it could be higher, but it’s important to remember that there are five colors in Magic, plus a bunch of different color combinations, so having over ¼th of the humans be White-aligned is definitely a lean towards the White alignment. There’s also the fact that humans are the Characteristic Race for White. In order to keep things simple, a Characteristic Race is a kind of like the Iconic Races for each color except they tend to appear at all rarities and are generally smaller humanoid creatures that appear more often and on more vanilla or french vanilla cards. Iconic Races, like angels, tend to be rares or mythic rares and can often show up only a few times each set.

I would also go as far as to argue that humans in real life tend to be White-aligned too. That’s not to say that every human is White-aligned nor that most humans are even Mono-White aligned, I even would argue you’d actually be pretty hard-pressed to find any real person that’s specifically mono-colored in general. However, humans are very social creatures and society/community is something that is right up White’s alley, plus humans tend to have morals. To be more specific most people tend to have lines that they are not willing to cross, unlike say Black, and have things that they would argue you shouldn’t do. I would say this is also part of the reason why most of the generic villains we see in media could probably be described as Black-aligned. I mean just take like any dark lord who wants to rule the world for power’s sake or what have you.

On Innistrad, the humans tend to be White because put simply the church and faith. They often rely on things like the church and faith to protect themselves from the creepy crawlies of the night. This can especially be seen when Avacyn was around, as her powers made the faith-based magic concerning symbols and her stronger, along with a lot of other neat holy powers. She could also hear the prayers of everyone on Innistrad, which ties in with the whole faith thing.

Faith is definitely a massive reason why the humans on Innistrad are even alive right now and choose to continue fighting. White is a color that tries to achieve peace through structure and is thus a color that is very prone to religion and faith, not to say that the other colors can’t be religious or devoted. White also believes in an objective morality in the sense that there are just some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. You shouldn’t go around murdering people and doing so is morally wrong. This objective morality is something that a lot of religions and religious institutions, such as churches tend to have.

Ok but what about Green? Where and how does Green fit into all of this? Well, That’s actually relatively simple as well. Green, while tending to be a color of nature, is also a color that tends to lean heavily into tradition and the past. Since Green tends to love nature it often looks to how things have always been done as a way to understand how it should be doing things now. The Church on Innistrad has definitely existed for a long time and we know that the humans on Innistrad have some strong traditions, such as making certain sigils or symbols in an attempt to keep away the ever-growing abominations of the night.

It is also important to mention that there are definitely humans who turn to nature in order to help fight off any threats.

Now like with werewolves, let’s take a quick second to look at how Green and White together manifest in humans. When looking at this color combination, which many players refer to as Selesnya, not to be mistaken for the Selesnya Conclave on Ravnica, we should think about what they agree on, and once again it’s relatively simple… well for our purposes at least. The thing that tends to manifest in this color combination is community. Both the colors involved in this combination have an emphasis on the bigger picture and the greater good. There are things bigger than just yourself and just what you do. Both colors also agree that each person has a different but equally valid place in the world, whether it be in nature or society. They are also both enemies colors of Black, and in particular, they hate Black’s selfishness and how it puts itself above everything else. This sense of community can definitely be seen in the Humans of Innistrad as they are often forced to band and work together to fight off all kinds of monsters.

The community aspect can also be seen in the new keyword Coven, which is a keyword that provides a certain effect or ability if you control three or more creatures with different powers. This is an ability that explicitly calls to mind a community banding and using their different skill sets in order to help each other and achieve something that they could not achieve alone.

Now, in the most recent advancement in the story of the humans on Innistrad is with how they are dealing with the loss of the mighty Archangel Avacyn. Not only are the humans having a harder time fending off various monsters without her powerful magic and influence to protect them but we also learn that the nights on Innistrad have been growing unusually longer as the days grow shorter and shorter, which probably has something to do with the Eldrazi incident that lead to Emrakul being trapped in the moon. If something isn’t done soon the entirety of Innistrad might just end up in a perpetual state of endless night. Which considering all the horrors lurking in the dark would put some immense pressure on humanity’s survival. Humans, in such a desperate time, have resorted to turning to older, and perhaps even darker forms of magic in order to stave off the onslaught of various monsters, in particular many of the werewolves who have been getting more and more aggressive. At the same time, they also search for a way to restore Innistrad’s day/night cycle before it’s possibly too late.
The most interesting thing to me here is the fact that a lot of the humans are turning to old forms of witchcraft and black magic and yet a lot of the important warlocks we see that are using these old rituals and magics in order to try to fix these problems are actually Green-White aligned and doesn’t seem to be a substantial increase in the amount of Black-aligned humans. This is important to note because usually turning to forbidden or dark rituals and magics is a very Black-aligned thing to do. The reason being Black doesn’t believe in any sort of objective morality so when it’s dealing with issues nothing is off the table. No law that some rando made up is going to stop them from doing what they need to do in order to survive or win. Warlocks in general also tend to be a primarily Black-aligned tribe. So that begs the question once again why are they showing up in Green-White, the two enemy colors of Black, on Innistrad? Well, it has to do with the fact that these rituals are old, ancient even. As mentioned earlier Green likes tradition and often looks to the past in order to figure out what it should do and find its place in the world. So what we are seeing is humans falling back into ancient traditions and faiths in an attempt to save themselves. They are basically pulling a Green by returning to their roots, and the White alignment is still there for basically the same reason as before, and there is still the Green-White sense of community.

Who’s your favorite human on Innistrad, whether it be mechanics-wise, flavor-wise, or lore-wise?
Well, hopefully, you guys can gather enough people together to fend off the creatures of the night and I’ll see you when, no… IF the sun ever rises again…