What exactly happened with Shinnoks first war with Raiden?
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posted11/18/2016 07:00 AM (UTC)by
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DrgnLdy
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04/27/2014 09:53 PM (UTC)
I've always been a little confused, because, sources say he came down to claim Earthrealm for himself. But why? Was it for power, as some sources say? Was Shinnok interested in obtaining power over his fellow Elder Gods and Earthrealm provided some kind of special benefit over the others? Or, was it that he had some fixation over Earth like of an artwork as some sources also suggest?

Also, where did Shinnok first arrive in the mortal universe? It suggests that Shinnok caused problems throughout the other realms besides Earthrealm, as he's referenced as "the destroyer of worlds" by Quan Chi in Mythologies, somewhere in the universe he created his amulet, and in MK4, Raiden said something along the lines of waging war against Shinnok after sacrificing Earth's civilisation, which sounded like he lured Shinnok to Earthrealm from somewhere else or the battle against Shinnok was waged somewhere else in the universe after he probably laid waste to several realms or maybe even completely destroyed some entirely like Raiden in his Armageddon ending.

Something else that's bugged me is how exactly would Raiden and whoever else was with him been able to stop Shinnok at full power? Some sources suggest he was fighting with all the other Elder Gods, too, while some say it was just Raiden and maybe some other gods/ mortals. Which was it? And why didn't they/ Raiden just kill Shinnok instead of sending him to the Netherrealm? confused I guess it's possible Raiden couldn't kill him, so he did the next best thing or maybe banishing is just more dramatic. If the Elder Gods could have intervened and possessed Raiden like they did in MK9 to punish Shao Kahn, why would it have been necessary for the raptor race of Earth to have sacrificed or why didn't they just kill Shinnok in that case?

Oh, one more thing: I was always under the impression that Shinnok really the reason the dinosaurs were extinct, considering he says he suffered in Hell for millions of years and Raiden said he had to sacrifice an entire civilisation to stop him (so, if this was actually only thousands of years ago, according to Armageddon, then what civilisation did he sacrifice..? Humans /and/ Raptors?), but how or why exactly would you have had to do that? Maybe Shinnok took the realm from Raiden and he started killing the inhabitants that refused to obey and serve him? Or maybe it was similar to how Raiden had to kill Liu Kang in MK9 and he had to kill the raptor civilisation because they were trying to stop Raiden from opposing Shinnok. What do you think is the reason he had to kill off/ allow the extinction of the raptors to stop Shinnok?
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RazorsEdge701
05/19/2014 01:26 AM (UTC)
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They never explained why Shinnok decided he wanted all the power for himself. The MK4 cast are sadly all VERY underdeveloped characters.

My personal fan-theory is he's a bit traumatized by the whole One Being situation, like, y'know, the Elder Gods used to be slaves to a more powerful god until they rallied and killed him. A dude who's been an abused, poorly treated slave is probably gonna live with a chip on his shoulder all "No one will ever do that to ME again...in fact, I should be the master and everyone ELSE should be MY slaves, that way I'll never be at a disadvantage again!"

But like I said, that's speculative bullshitting.

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If the question is "But why does everyone think Earthrealm will make them the most powerful"?

Well...there was an idea in the first couple games that's since been sort of forgotten/retconned out, just like the whole "unbalancing the furies" thing, that Earth is the "Mother Realm", meaning that it's sorta the center of the universe, has the most naturally-occuring portals to other places, is sort of a hub-world all the other realms are connected to, like how Midgard is the center of the World Tree. Conquer Earth and it's easy to conquer everywhere else.

Nowadays, the badguys seem to treat it as no different than Outworld or Edenia, just "the next one on the list" or if anything, it might be "the realm with the most souls". 'Cause, y'know, a population of 7 billion people probably beats the hell out of a barren, ravaged husk like Outworld or realms that are rebuilding after being recently unmerged.

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Where else has Shinnok been/where did he create the amulet?
Honestly, it makes the most sense if he just created it in The Void. It's an unofficial Kamidogu. The Kamidogu were created in The Void, where the Elder Gods live, before realms even existed, when the Void was the only place there was.

I'm sure that, in an infinite-sized empty vacuum of space, the Elder Gods have plenty of room for privacy and can keep secrets from each other...

And I think "destroyer of worlds" is just a figure of speech. A religious philosophy or statement of intent, not a list of things he's done in the past.

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How did Raiden beat an Elder God?

Shinnok put all his powers inside the amulet when he created it.

The reason he created the amulet was to mask his "power signature" or whatever you might want to call it, so the other Elder Gods couldn't sense what he was up to, couldn't see him on Earth fucking shit up. Either that or the amulet actually has the power to block them out and prevent them from interfering on Earth. The lore's a little vague on that point, it only says the amulet somehow "kept them from interfering".

But the point that all of his Elder God powers are inside of it and without it, he doesn't have them, still stands.

Also, it's designed to give the bearer complete control of wind, earth, water, and fire, allowing Shinnok to disable 4 out of 5 Earthrealm gods right out of the gate

So...yeah, no, Raiden was alone during the war. No help from the Elders, no help from his brothers. Just him and the mortals.

He won by finding out about the amulet and stealing it. Same way Sub-Zero wins at the end of Mythologies, basically...

Steal the amulet and he's only as powerful as his mortal form, same as any other deity who manifests on the mortal plane in a human body.

---

Logically, what you might now be asking is, "If the amulet has all those powers, how come Quan Chi isn't Elder God-powerful when he has it?"

Well, MKDA pretty clearly shows he has no idea how to use the damn thing until he accidentally unearths some lore and learns new stuff about it.

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Why didn't they kill Shinnok when they beat him?

As established by Dark Raiden's origin story in MKD/MKA, gods respawn.

Trapping him in Hell is more permanent and easier to enforce.

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Did Raiden and Shinnok kill the dinosaurs?

No.

The dinosaurs died out about 60-some million years ago.


The Raiden/Shinnok war happened AFTER Kahn took over Outworld and started attacking Edenia, but before Edenia lost Mortal Kombat and got merged, 10,000 years ago.

We know that because Kahn/Outworld vs. Edenia was going on when Taven and Daegon were put to sleep, and when Taven woke up, he was not aware Shinnok had gone evil or been sent to Hell.

We know the Raptors were around when the Raiden/Shinnok war happened, and the Raptors are evolved, humanoid descendants of the dinosaurs, and evolution takes millions of years.

Also, we know humans were alive when the Raiden/Shinnok war happened because Raiden had human allies, who built the temple the Amulet was hidden in, kept the only map, and became the Shaolin Monks.

Humans and dinosaurs were never alive at the same time.
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As for Raiden's lines in MK4 about "allowing it to happen", I think that's just typical heroic guilt like how if Superman or Spider-Man fail to save someone, they take the blame and go "I let him die" when it wasn't really like that.

I'm sure it was either a caught-in-the-crossfire situation, or Shinnok was deliberately slaughtering mortals for whatever evil reason, and Raiden failed to stop him.
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DrgnLdy
05/19/2014 04:03 AM (UTC)
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It makes one wonder why the Elder Gods didn't just punish and ban people to Hell for trying to take Earthrealm at all to begin with if it was so important instead of setting up Mortal Kombat tournaments to slow down Shao Kahn. Even if the Motherrealm concept was retconned, what's the point of allowing anyone to control and merge realms? I just find it silly that the Elder Gods would be surprised that Kahn could almost over power them after he absorbed Earthrealm in MK9. Though, they did seem like they wanted to stop him in MK3, too... But again, not sure why they wasted their time trying to appease him with Mortal Kombat tournaments.
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RazorsEdge701
05/19/2014 08:16 AM (UTC)
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To be fair, the Elder Gods are stuck in a complicated position.

They're like the parents of a kid they never wanted to have. They have to take care of a universe that was created by accident, full of mortals they don't want anything to do with, because if they ignore it and let guys like Kahn do whatever they want, it'll eventually turn back into an evil overgod that will enslave them.

But if they interfere *too* much, THAT might turn it back into an evil overgod that will enslave them too.

They're trying to keep the One Being's existence as secret as possible, so that one day some nihilistic psycho can't get it in their head to end it all by bringing him back on purpose. If they had responded to Kahn's first merger ever by immediately shoving him into Hell with no warning, no trial, no explanation why what he did was wrong, they might end up looking like tyrants and have rebellion on their hands.
So basically the tournament is them trying to appease both sides, telling Kahn "Okay fine, you can merge a realm every now and then, but you have to waste a few centuries each time with this song-and-dance distraction we came up with to slow you down", while telling the mortals "Okay, we know, it's not fair that this immortal wizard-god can snap his fingers and make you all dead. How about if we make it so the only way he can take over your planet is if he sends some weaker proxies to face your best guys in as fair a fight as possible first?"

And the whole point of all this is they're just hoping that those few thousand years will be enough time for someone else to kill Kahn for them so they don't ever have to actually do anything themselves.

Besides, historically, the Netherealm has proven to suck pretty hard at keeping prisoners trapped. I'm not exactly sure what's blocking Shinnok from being able to leave when every dead mortal soul in the realms can get out any time they like. Especially since in the MK9 universe, the Elder Gods apparently never really had the power to stop Kahn from walking through portals, turns out that was a magic spell that Sindel cast.
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DrgnLdy
05/19/2014 10:26 AM (UTC)
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Do you think Shinnok took this all into consideration, told no one, not even his own servants, about the One Being as well and only intended to hold onto some of the realms as to not awake it? His ending and Reptile's in MK4 implies he controls literally all of reality, so I'm not sure he doesn't just seize and merge all of the realms perhaps out of indirect influence from the One Being despite him knowing the consequences of doing that.
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RazorsEdge701
05/19/2014 08:06 PM (UTC)
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Once you go down to the realms in mortal form and start being an End Boss, it becomes tricky to tell how much of your ideas are sane-ly reasoned and plotted out things you came up with on your own and how much of them are examples of the One Being subconsciously pushing you to reassemble him, like he did to Kahn, Onaga, and possibly Dark Raiden.
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wdm6789
05/20/2014 01:22 AM (UTC)
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RazorsEdge701 Wrote:
To be fair, the Elder Gods are stuck in a complicated position.

They're like the parents of a kid they never wanted to have. They have to take care of a universe that was created by accident, full of mortals they don't want anything to do with, because if they ignore it and let guys like Kahn do whatever they want, it'll eventually turn back into an evil overgod that will enslave them.

But if they interfere *too* much, THAT might turn it back into an evil overgod that will enslave them too.


They're trying to keep the One Being's existence as secret as possible, so that one day some nihilistic psycho can't get it in their head to end it all by bringing him back on purpose. If they had responded to Kahn's first merger ever by immediately shoving him into Hell with no warning, no trial, no explanation why what he did was wrong, they might end up looking like tyrants and have rebellion on their hands.

So basically the tournament is them trying to appease both sides, telling Kahn "Okay fine, you can merge a realm every now and then, but you have to waste a few centuries each time with this song-and-dance distraction we came up with to slow you down", while telling the mortals "Okay, we know, it's not fair that this immortal wizard-god can snap his fingers and make you all dead. How about if we make it so the only way he can take over your planet is if he sends some weaker proxies to face your best guys in as fair a fight as possible first?"

And the whole point of all this is they're just hoping that those few thousand years will be enough time for someone else to kill Kahn for them so they don't ever have to actually do anything themselves.

Besides, historically, the Netherealm has proven to suck pretty hard at keeping prisoners trapped. I'm not exactly sure what's blocking Shinnok from being able to leave when every dead mortal soul in the realms can get out any time they like. Especially since in the MK9 universe, the Elder Gods apparently never really had the power to stop Kahn from walking through portals, turns out that was a magic spell that Sindel cast.


I love your succinct overview of the Mortal Kombat lore. Very spot on, I had never thought of it like that before.

I do have one question though, was Shinnok the "one being" and the Elder gods sent him to hell or something?

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Spider804
05/20/2014 04:03 PM (UTC)
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No, the One Being is a separate entity, basically all the realms and all the living beings who exist are born from it's thoughts/dreams, I'm sure Razor can be a bit more elaborate in the details but that's the gist of it.
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RazorsEdge701
05/20/2014 08:22 PM (UTC)
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At the beginning of time, there was no universe, there was nothing but an empty void and in it lived the Elder Gods and The One Being, who's like a god that's even more powerful than they are.

The Elder Gods were the One Being's slaves, so they created the Kamidogu and killed him with it.

The One Being's death was the Big Bang. The universe is made out of pieces of his body.

Shinnok is an Elder God who went bad long after that because he wanted to take over Earth.
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mattteo
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06/26/2016 10:57 AM (UTC)
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RazorsEdge701 Wrote:
They never explained why Shinnok decided he wanted all the power for himself. The MK4 cast are sadly all VERY underdeveloped characters.

My personal fan-theory is he's a bit traumatized by the whole One Being situation, like, y'know, the Elder Gods used to be slaves to a more powerful god until they rallied and killed him. A dude who's been an abused, poorly treated slave is probably gonna live with a chip on his shoulder all "No one will ever do that to ME again...in fact, I should be the master and everyone ELSE should be MY slaves, that way I'll never be at a disadvantage again!"


But like I said, that's speculative bullshitting.


---


If the question is "But why does everyone think Earthrealm will make them the most powerful"?

Well...there was an idea in the first couple games that's since been sort of forgotten/retconned out, just like the whole "unbalancing the furies" thing, that Earth is the "Mother Realm", meaning that it's sorta the center of the universe, has the most naturally-occuring portals to other places, is sort of a hub-world all the other realms are connected to, like how Midgard is the center of the World Tree. Conquer Earth and it's easy to conquer everywhere else.


Nowadays, the badguys seem to treat it as no different than Outworld or Edenia, just "the next one on the list" or if anything, it might be "the realm with the most souls". 'Cause, y'know, a population of 7 billion people probably beats the hell out of a barren, ravaged husk like Outworld or realms that are rebuilding after being recently unmerged.


---


Where else has Shinnok been/where did he create the amulet?

Honestly, it makes the most sense if he just created it in The Void. It's an unofficial Kamidogu. The Kamidogu were created in The Void, where the Elder Gods live, before realms even existed, when the Void was the only place there was.


I'm sure that, in an infinite-sized empty vacuum of space, the Elder Gods have plenty of room for privacy and can keep secrets from each other...


And I think "destroyer of worlds" is just a figure of speech. A religious philosophy or statement of intent, not a list of things he's done in the past.


---

How did Raiden beat an Elder God?

Shinnok put all his powers inside the amulet when he created it.

The reason he created the amulet was to mask his "power signature" or whatever you might want to call it, so the other Elder Gods couldn't sense what he was up to, couldn't see him on Earth fucking shit up. Either that or the amulet actually has the power to block them out and prevent them from interfering on Earth. The lore's a little vague on that point, it only says the amulet somehow "kept them from interfering".


But the point that all of his Elder God powers are inside of it and without it, he doesn't have them, still stands.

Also, it's designed to give the bearer complete control of wind, earth, water, and fire, allowing Shinnok to disable 4 out of 5 Earthrealm gods right out of the gate

So...yeah, no, Raiden was alone during the war. No help from the Elders, no help from his brothers. Just him and the mortals.


He won by finding out about the amulet and stealing it. Same way Sub-Zero wins at the end of Mythologies, basically...

Steal the amulet and he's only as powerful as his mortal form, same as any other deity who manifests on the mortal plane in a human body.


---


Logically, what you might now be asking is, "If the amulet has all those powers, how come Quan Chi isn't Elder God-powerful when he has it?"


Well, MKDA pretty clearly shows he has no idea how to use the damn thing until he accidentally unearths some lore and learns new stuff about it.


---

Why didn't they kill Shinnok when they beat him?

As established by Dark Raiden's origin story in MKD/MKA, gods respawn.

Trapping him in Hell is more permanent and easier to enforce.

---

Did Raiden and Shinnok kill the dinosaurs?

No.

The dinosaurs died out about 60-some million years ago.


The Raiden/Shinnok war happened AFTER Kahn took over Outworld and started attacking Edenia, but before Edenia lost Mortal Kombat and got merged, 10,000 years ago.

We know that because Kahn/Outworld vs. Edenia was going on when Taven and Daegon were put to sleep, and when Taven woke up, he was not aware Shinnok had gone evil or been sent to Hell.

We know the Raptors were around when the Raiden/Shinnok war happened, and the Raptors are evolved, humanoid descendants of the dinosaurs, and evolution takes millions of years.

Also, we know humans were alive when the Raiden/Shinnok war happened because Raiden had human allies, who built the temple the Amulet was hidden in, kept the only map, and became the Shaolin Monks.

Humans and dinosaurs were never alive at the same time.

---


As for Raiden's lines in MK4 about "allowing it to happen", I think that's just typical heroic guilt like how if Superman or Spider-Man fail to save someone, they take the blame and go "I let him die" when it wasn't really like that.


I'm sure it was either a caught-in-the-crossfire situation, or Shinnok was deliberately slaughtering mortals for whatever evil reason, and Raiden failed to stop him.




Sorry for bringing up this old thread, but I just found this awesome, full of information post by RazorsEdge701, especially in regards to when the conflict between Raiden and Shinnok happened. Yes, Shinnok does say he suffered in Hell for "millions of years", but it's just an exaggeration. There are numerous references that claim the Shinnok-Raiden first war was only thousands of years ago, like it says in the beggining of MK Mythologies.
In order for Edenia to fall to Shao Kahn, the Protector God Argus had to be killed by Daegon, so the demigod was awoken around 10.000 years ago and killed his father, probably because Shinnok orchestrated the fall of Edenia to weaken the Elder Gods and be able to step into Earthrealm.

I just want to say thank you to RazorsEdge701 for being such a fan of tge lore and for his comment which is of great contribution. Is RazorsEdge still among us, using mko?
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Venkman28
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I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.
06/28/2016 02:24 AM (UTC)
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RazorsEdge, from what I heard, got banned for being a racist. Shame, he really knew the lore of Mortal Kombat.
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mattteo
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06/28/2016 07:00 AM (UTC)
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Venkman28 Wrote:
RazorsEdge, from what I heard, got banned for being a racist. Shame, he really knew the lore of Mortal Kombat.



Oh, that's too bad. I feel that mko has lost a very good contributor
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shaggysorceror
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Look, now Baraka has grown hair and beard! Shit, the time does fly...

09/22/2016 10:05 AM (UTC)
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Venkman28 Wrote:
RazorsEdge, from what I heard, got banned for being a racist. Shame, he really knew the lore of Mortal Kombat.




He was also very wise, eloquent and original thinking (I never once even guessed he was a racist). I chatted with him on several occasions, he was one of the rare MKO guys whose opinion I'd find amusing, rather than irritating. Various dubious quirks are often common with artistic and philosophical people, though. I myself am an example, as well.

Take care, Razor!
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RazorsEdge701
11/18/2016 07:00 AM (UTC)
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I'm only going to do this one time, ever. This will be the last post I ever make on MKO and I'm only making it to finally put a stupid old rumor to rest:

I think you'll find that if you read every thread I've posted in except that one over the ten years I was here, I never said anything "racist" anywhere else and in fact often argued against other people's racist comments when subjects like "Jade's skin color/ethnicity" would come up. What actually happened was about two years ago I said some offensive things on purpose in response to someone who attacked me first, unprokoved, because I was TRYING to demonstrate a point about how MKO doesn't have moderators anymore and Mick wasn't paying enough attention, and people were at the time getting away with saying really, really outrageous stuff that shouldn't have been allowed and having big flame wars without being punished for it. Like, what I was trying to say when I did it was "is this how far you have to go before someone will finally mod you?" Clearly not everyone got that what I was doing was staging a god damned demonstration or why, which is my only regret.

And I was only banned for 3 days. I just chose to never come back when it happened because the point I was trying to make was a really good reason to not be here anymore. Honestly, even though a lot of the people I was complaining about and wanting to see get banned did get banned after I was gone...even so, this place still kinda sucks. It's just that it's totally dead. It was pretty dead already when I did it, that was part of the problem, no one wants to be here anymore including the staff lol.
If people want to talk to me and be somewhere where I'm still sharing my knowledge, they can find me on DeviantArt or on my Twitter or in the comment sections of the Netherkast's videos, or on the Netherkast's facebook group.

For the most part, those are all great places (especially the facebook group...although it's private, I don't know how to invite people but I'm pretty sure Cyborg does) to have intelligent conversation in a pleasant environment where nobody's a jerk and people actually learn each other's names and act like friends, which is a feeling I sadly never quite found in the 10 whole years I posted here. Also, those places all have way more users than MKO does now, lol.

So...yeah. Thanks for all the compliments, I really appreciate you guys thinking I've been so helpful over the years...but seriously, this place is dead now and (except for this post, which I promise really is my last, I just really, really wanted to finally clear up that nasty rumor), I'm not coming back.
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