Temperance and Vengeance was a narrative released on the official Killer Instinct website to serve as a rebooted backstory for Maya in Killer Instinct (2013). It was released in a news post on January 11, 2016.
Maya's Story[]
A member of a secretive and ancient clan of monster hunters called the Night Guard, Maya has lived her entire life with the knowledge that the world is a much scarier place than most will ever see. While humans believe themselves to have grown beyond childish boogeymen and creatures of myth, Maya and her order know that they indeed exist, and travel the globe to hunt and eliminate these threats as they attempt to prey on humanity.
Maya and her twin sister Mira grew up in the Guard’s timeworn citadel in the Andes—the only home they’d ever known. They listened with rapt attention to the stories of adventure and intrigue from the Guard’s members after they had returned from their missions. They learned that monsters wear many faces…sometimes even human ones.
Both girls loved the honeycomb of maze-like passages below the temples, and spent countless hours exploring them, much to the chagrin of their father and the rest of the order, who repeatedly warned them of the dangers of the many arcane items and antiquities kept deep in the dark places below the headquarters. Maya became fascinated by a certain set of golden daggers uncovered in the vaults after the destruction and immolation of the horror—the sorcerer Kan-Ra—who once ruled the Andean citadel.
When they were of appropriate age, the sisters apprenticed with other Night Guard members on hunts, eventually maturing into capable agents of the order. The young women worked well together, and Maya and Mira became one of the Guard’s best duos, travelling the world and hunting evil wherever it reared its many ugly heads.
While tracking down an age-old evil in vaults deep within the Siberian Mountains, Mira was forced to sacrifice herself to save her sister. In the days and years that followed Maya’s recovery from that mission, she became increasingly enraged at her failure to protect her beloved sister, resulting in poorly executed missions that exposed her and the Guard to the public. This carelessness eventually drew the attention of ARIA—the artificial mind running Ultratech.
Maya's burn mark, courtesy of Cinder
Under ARIA’s orders (and led by the fiery plasma creature known as Cinder), an Ultratech army stormed the citadel to raid the Night Guard’s headquarters for its secrets. During this battle, the sorcerer Kan-Ra was accidentally released from a vault where he’d been imprisoned for centuries. Kan-Ra escaped with a collection of tomes documenting an ancient battle with an entity known as a "Shadow Lord".
Maya, wielding the set of forbidden daggers, was the only order member to emerge from the conflict alive. Her order decimated and multiple evil forces freed once again, she set out to first recapture the sorcerer and bring Ultratech to justice for the murders of the Guard’s members.
Maya finally faced down Kan-Ra, defeating him and discovering his recent manipulations of dimensions through powerful portals. Peering into this other plane, Maya was touched by the Astral entities there, gaining insight into the nefarious plans of a malevolent being called Gargos…but with no clear idea as to how this mighty creature could be thwarted.
She then recruited a number of the heroes in order to plan how best to act against these two growing threats when Ultratech attacked yet again, bent on wiping out the heroes before they could move against the sinister megacorporation. But right before killing Maya and her comrades ARIA withdrew her forces as a new and potentially apocalyptic threat suddenly appeared on the Earth—a demonic force led by Gargos: the master of the Shadow Lords.
In the few moments during which Maya is separated from her golden daggers Temperance and Vengeance, a perhaps clearer mind forces her to wonder if she is gaining mastery over their magicks, or if the magicks are gaining mastery over her. Is she losing access to the daggers’ most powerful techniques, or are those techniques transforming into something greater?
Trivia[]
- Temperance and Vengeance was released out of rotation, and came out one week before TJ Combo's backstory was ever published, even though Maya was added after him in Season Two.
External Links[]
Maya's Official Backstory on the official Killer Instinct Website
Maya's Character Page on the official Killer Instinct Website
