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The History Books of Black Matrix

Last updated: 2026-06-01
Author: Raindare

This section serves an extension to Juraku's other pages on Black Matrix: a compilation and translation of the lore found, chiefly, in Black/Matrix's in-game books, but also dispensed by John, Philip, and a certain other character later in the game.

In the game itself, this information is often easily missed, and sometimes awkwardly placed. Despite that, from everything we're told, we can piece together both versions of "good" and "evil" in the world of Black/Matrix, as well as its true nature.

Warning: Everything below the next heading is major spoilers, in part because I will be presenting everything in chronological order.


The World's Creation

At the end of the game, it is stated by the Pope and corroborated by both the protagonists and the villains that the world has one true god. This figure is distinguished from both God and Satan (with their names written in katakana) by being referred to as 神 (kami).

Originally, "good" and "evil" did not exist in the world of Black/Matrix at all. However, just as all things are covered in both light and shadow, for the idea of "good" to exist, it was necessary to create, by force, the idea of "evil" as well.

Therefore, the one true god created the Archangels to administer and represent both good and evil. The greatest of them, God, was entrusted with the overall ministration of the world, and the second greatest, Satan, was appointed by the one true god as a judge who watches over humanity.

Satan served under God as his second-in-command, but this arrangement was not to last. This precipitated the Genesis War.


The Genesis War

The Genesis War is a battle in which God and Satan fought over the control of the Earth.

Initially, the player is told that this occurred because Satan and his people, the Black Winged Ones, lived in a horrific underworld and did not get to enjoy the blessings of the surface world. This is claimed in the books in the master's library, and Philip shares this as the common myth among blackwings as well. Indeed, the party does eventually traverse a monstrous underworld teeming with lava, but it's not clear that anyone ever lived there besides the transmogrified monsters they face in battle.

Later, John states that the war was actually caused by God's plan to exterminate the "monkeys" (i.e. wingless humans) who God himself had created. John has been around since all of this happened, so he is a very reliable source. In other words, the above narrative is false. By the standards of the modern Black/Matrix world, Satan was sinning by protecting the weak and treating them as equals.

Though he was unable to prevent the Flood, and all of the wingless ones perished, Satan defeated God and became the new ruler of the world.

It is after this point that we see a significant gap in Black/Matrix's history, but an important one. We don't know if how the moral decline of the world happened; if it was Satan's plan from the outset, if he grew wicked over time, or if it was out of his hands. John states that Mephisto "knew" that the evil Archangels would muck everything up and so appointed John as an Archbishop, but John was also Mephisto's closest confidante, so he may not be reliable here.


Mephisto

What we do know is this: when Satan served God, he was known as Metatron. Later, he was known as Ha-Satan. To those closer to him, he took the name Mephistopheles, or simply Mephisto.

In other words, Metatron is Mephisto is Satan. It is an important and recurring theme not just in this game, but in Black Matrix 00, that the same person can have multiple titles, and the same will can be inherited by people who seem to be completely separate at first glance.

At some point, likely before defeating God, Mephisto took Adam's wife, Lilith, and the two pursued a love that was forbidden to her. Later, Lilith was elevated to the rank of Archangel by Satan, now the ruler of the world, but she eventually passed on.

However, her soul was stored in the Archangel Armour bequeathed to her by Satan, and when her reincarnation, Luca, dons that armour, she inherits the will (and feelings) of Lilith for Mephisto (who is now our protagonist, Abel). This happens a lot in Black/Matrix: vessels are used to store a replica of the wearer's souls so that they can reawaken their memories of their past life later. Usually, this vessel is a suit of armour.

After Lilith's death, Mephisto wed Japheth, the daughter of Noah and the last surviving wingless human. Mephisto cursed her with immortality, ensuring that even as the other survivors aboard Noah's Ark died, she remained.

Mephisto's purpose in marrying Japtheth was to ensure that humanity could continue, and indeed they had many children, with six of them still alive at the time of Black/Matrix: the potential masters. We can infer from Japheth, later the Pope, saying that she felt "love and hate" for him to mean that it was not a perfect marriage, and perhaps this transactional relationship was the first sign of Satan's turn to evil in the guise of good.

Speaking of the Pope, while Japheth was cursed with immortality, Mephisto was not. It took billions of years, but he expired not too long before the events of Black/Matrix. However, fearing that society would collapse without its unifying leader, the Pope pulled a Weekend at Bernie's and told only Luca and a few others that Mephisto was dead. From there, she continued to "convey the word of Satan" as she always had.

However, as previously established, an archangel is only dead as long as they lack a vessel and their memories. Prior to his death, Mephisto entrusted his Archangel's Armour to John, while the Pope, for her part, sought a person who could act as Mephisto's vessel.

At first, she looked among her son and her daughters, but none of them possessed the essence of equality that, in her estimation, would come from within Mephisto's heart. Instead, they possessed strong love, which she traced back to her own heart. But then it transpired that one of her children was living romantically alongside their slave, as equals. It was the slave, Abel, who the Pope identified as a potential reincarnation of, and therefore successor to, Mephisto.

From then on, she spied on him and her child, and in many ways it is easy to imagine that Abel's imprisonment and the master's kidnapping were always a part of her plans.


The End

What the Pope did not count on was that the five evil Archangels -- Mammon, Juda, Astarte, Baal and Cherubim -- would fall in battle, and then betray her. Their souls entered her body, and after just a few minutes, they collectively possessed her in order to steal the magical power she gained from Mephisto.

However, the five evil Archangels did not, in turn, expect to regain their memories as creations of the one true god. Who, as it turns out, would really like to see the current, twisted world destroyed. It's worth noting that once they regained their memories, they talk about "love" with none of their former disgust, indicating that even the archangels the one true god created to be evil were never meant to be THAT incredibly evil.

This is the sequence of events that plays out in the original Black/Matrix and it can still happen in the remakes. It's also the only one I'll be talking about here, because it's really the only one that tells us much about the world itself. To wit:

Here's a final tidbit.

In at least one version of the game, if you make one of the optional characters, say Aquen, wear Demon Armour and learn spells, and then kill them, you get the Armour back, and if a new wearer dons it, they have access to the same spells. In other words, it's not just divine beings -- anyone and everyone can seemingly pass on their will or even reincarnate in the Black/Matrix universe. That makes the endings a fair bit less bleak!