SMITE: Demigods, Deities and Gods Explained is a column dedicated to introducing prospective players of SMITE to its massive back story of lore. From the Greek to Hindu, each week we’ll look at two characters from a major pantheon and provide a quick recap of their history and in what capacity their digital incarnation will represent on the field of Hi-Rez Studios’ new MOBA.
Lore: The two-faced god Janus is the Roman god with the power over beginnings and transitions. This puts gates, doors, passages and time under his reign. Like Thursday, Janus also lended his name to the month of January, which made the transition from the Julian calendar of the Roman period (and well beyond) to the Gregorian reform that’s in use today. The title is likely to please the one that looks forward and backwards, marking the transition from one year and one month to the next. This transitional oversight is nearly omnipresent, from birth to death, war to peace and journeys to destination. Janus oversaw it all.
Uncommon to the Roman pantheon, Janus, the God of Beginnings and Transitions, had no equal in the predecessor pantheon of ancient Greece.
These overreaching areas put Janus in relation, at odds with or aligned with numerous other gods, their realms or some combination. This means he plays cameo or small roles in numerous mythological tales. Perhaps the most important is that explaining his welcoming of Saturn. After Jupiter cast out the God of Capitol, Janus invited him to share his own kingdom.
In-Game: Hi-Rez Studios had numerous options to chose from for Janus given the god’s range of powers. The game designers settled on transitions, more specifically portals. Janus wields these dimensional rifts as a magical mage spreading damage across areas and allowing allies or himself to leap between locations with ease.
Transitioning through these trigger his passive, adding 25% more magical damage to his abilities. Furthermore, every ability sees additional damage from from magic power. His high utility, including allowing himself and his team to move with ease across the map, make him a scary opponent. Here one minute, gone the next, a stack of magic damage and cooldown reduction can turn him into a formidable killing machine. Grab items like Chronos’ Pendant, Rod of Tahuti or Obsidian’s Shard to increase power, lower cooldown and ravage foes.
Further reading:
- Janus on Wikipedia
- Roman Mythology on Wikipedia
Head over to SMITE: Demigods, Deities and Gods Explained for details on all of the playable characters.
O’Donnell, I predict, will be teurncod. Appearing multiple times on Bill Maher’s show, as a conservative, is not an effective springboard toward elected office. I haven’t seen or heard from her, since she dissed the Sunday a.m news shows. Is she hiding in Cheney’s undisclosed hideaway?