Intro

Links

• Other Links: https://www.reddit.com/r/Overwatch/comments/8c4afk/interesting_thing_about_dark_mercy_moira_skin/

Notes

I found this really interesting, though it has no bearing on gameplay. I’m recreating it here in case reddit goes away or locks things down. All credit for this thought and research goes to https://www.reddit.com/user/n-turalLog/ .

Original Text

If you aren’t familiar, when Moira was released we were shown this skin in her backstory comic. I was really hoping to see it in the Retribution event and since we didn’t get it, I decided to do some digging out of boredom, to see if I could guess what they might call the skin. While I was googling away I stumbled on a very interesting piece of Greek mythology. There are these female spirits of death called Keres, which are often compared to Valkyries! Both Valkyries and Keres are spirits that fly over battlefields and decide who lives and who dies, but in contrast to the benevolent nature of Valkyries, Keres are considered malevolent creatures. The word Keres can also be interpreted to mean plague or disease, which thematically seems relevant to Moira’s abilities. Already I was convinced that they were probably the inspiration behind the Moira/Mercy parallels but the similarities don’t stop there! The Keres are daughters of Nyx, which would also make them sisters to the Moirai, or the controllers of Destiny. The name is clearly very similar to our own Moira and in Homer’s Poetics he even uses the word moira to mean the limit or the end of life!

Obviously this isn’t impactful or meaningful in any real way but I just had to share this information because it was so interesting to me! Essentially all this implies is that the name Moira and her design may have been influenced by the Keres and Greek mythology. I suppose it’s a bit of a stretch but it got me excited nonetheless! Hopefully you guys find this as interesting as I did.

EDIT: One other cool fact of the Keres I forgot to include is that they are described as having claws, clearly similar to Moira’s very long nails!

EDIT 2: I’m realizing this post actually has almost nothing to do with that skin lol. I just happened to find this out while trying to name the skin!

EDIT 3: I’m getting some conflicting PMs. Some saying the word Moira in Greek would be pronounced Mee-ra and some saying it would be pronounced the same way we say the hero’s name so I leave this one up to your own interpretation. Ok so I did some further fact checking and although in ancient greek moira can be pronounced the way we say the hero’s name, in the instance of Homer’s Poetics it is pronounced mee-ra