A while back, I posted this theory about what might’ve happened to the Tarkir Dragonlords, and a lot of people (rightfully) poked a lot of holes in that one. This one is both somewhat of a follow up and a brand new approach from a totally different direction. 

So, the general background events that led to Tarkir Dragonstorm went something like this:

1. For thousands of years, Tarkir was ruled by the dragonlords and their broods. The dragonstorms consistently produced dragons of the five broods. 
2. The Phyrexian invasion weakened the hold of the dragonlords, and humanoids rebelled. 
3. They performed the Stormnexus ritual, summoning the spirit dragons.
4. The dragonlords were “defeated by the clan leaders and their spirit dragons and seemingly swallowed up by the massive storm”.
5. Subsequently, the dragonstorms intensified and became wild, beginning production of dragons not part of the original broods.

Clearly, the disappearance of the dragonlords and the wilding of the dragonstorms is correlated, they happened right after each other. Generally, the accepted explanation is that the Stormnexus ritual caused both the dragonlord’s disappearance and the wilding of the dragonstorm, 4 <- 3 -> 5, basically. But what if the causal relationship is actually 3 -> 4 -> 5? What if the disappearance of the dragonlords is the exact reason why the storms went wild? What if… the dragonlords were acting as “templates” for the storms for most of Tarkir’s history?

Basically, the idea is that the Stormnexus ritual never actually changed the nature of the Dragonstorms at all. It was always capable of making those wild dragons. It was just that, before the ritual, there was a strong bias for the storms to make a dragon that belonged to one of the 5 dragonlord broods. When the dragonlords disappeared, the storms lost the “templates" it once depended on and thus the strong bias, and started basically throwing stuff at the wall. Therefore, the birth of the wild dragons. The idea of there being platonic archetypes is actually well established in mtg, see Polukranos on Theros… or actually most of Theros in general. Who’s to say the dragonstorms don’t work the same way? 

This potentially opens a cool way for the dragonlords to eventually come back without rethreading old ground: they can potentially return as avatars/incarnations of the dragonic archetype they’ve always represented. IE, Ojutai can return as an Incarnation of THE Dragonic Scholar, Dromoka the Dragonic Guardian, Atarka the Dragonic Hunter/Predator, Silumgar the Dragonic Tyrant, etc. If they returned this way, they certainly can not rule the same way they used to, nor will the clans let them. Instead they’d be more like religious figures/spiritual leaders. The clans also wouldn’t be able to kill their way out of this since the dragonlords wouldn’t… be alive in the traditional sense anymore. So Tarkir turns into a massive pressure cooker between the Clans + Spirit Dragons vs. Dragonlord Incarnations + their worshippers >!(maximum cope from me)!<. That sounds like my kind of set… though I apologize to people who wanted Tarkir to be more clan centric. 

While I was doing some fun what-ifs and speculative world building, I came up with some scientific/metaphysics frameworks to explain some plot events that happened in my what-if… and I realized it can actually be applied to actual, canon, characters and events. Since it happened to turn out really well, I wanted to share it with everyone. So, the gist of the theory is: 

Pt.1: Principle Manifestation Hypothesis (PMH)

It’s very simple. Just three laws:

1. There exists fundamental patterns underlying reality called Principles.
2. Principles can manifest into independent entities under certain conditions.
3. Manifestations of the same Principle can differ significantly depending on their method of manifestation.

Pt.2 Root Resonance Hypothesis (RRH)

An extension of PMH.

1. Principles create underlying fields.
2. Powerful manifestations can excite these fields.
3. Excited fields increase the probability of additional manifestations.
4. New manifestations are not direct copies or fragments of the original

Under these frameworks, we can classify certain manifestations further. For now, let’s focus on two categories:

• Root Manifestation
  • A manifestation of a Principle under a theoretical "vacuum state."
  • Often vast, transplanar entities like the Eldrazi Titans.
• Resonant Manifestation
  • A manifestation created through interaction between:
    • a Principle field,
    • local conditions,
    • other entities,
    • collective resonance.
  • Often differ significantly between each other, can form cycles

Okay, how can we apply this, you ask? Well…

The Ur-Dragon:

Principle: Dragonic Existence/Dragonhood

This is perhaps the cleanest application of this framework. From the wiki:

>The Ur-Dragon is described as a huge, dark, and terrifying shadow. It is a being that lives betwixt and between, in a place and no place: it is blind. In its travel through the planes, it creates storms with the beating of its wings: from such storms, other dragons are born. Its "children", created in the Birth of the Elder Dragons, include the twin Elder Dragons Ugin and Nicol Bolas, as well as their siblings and cousins.

Under PMH, the Ur-Dragon could be explained as… the Root Manifestation of Dragonhood as a principle. Then, we can interpet the "storms from the beating of his wings" as him exciting the underlying field of Dragonhood. The elder dragons that were born from that are therefore, RRH resonant manifestations of the principle of Dragonhood.

With the easy/textbook example out of the way, let’s get to the spicy ones:

The Yawgmoth Thesis

Principle: Transformation/Perfection, Given the name ‘Phyrexia’ by Yawgmoth

A reinterpretation of the famous Phyrexian Scriptures as seen on [[Dark Ritual|USG]] and the art of [[Phyrexian Scriptures]] and [[The True Scriptures]] through the PMH and RRH:

>From void evolved Phyrexia. Great Yawgmoth, Father of Machines, saw its perfection. Thus the Grand Evolution began.

The traditional interpretation:

Yawgmoth created Phyrexia, or discovered the plane of Old Phyrexia.

PMH interpretation:

Yawgmoth discovered a Principle and aligned himself with it.

The PMH interpretation proposes that Yawgmoth may have been the first mortal to recognize ‘Phyrexia’ as a cosmic Principle. This solves the old issue of how Yawgmoth got so powerful. The traditional explanation is that he fused with the plane itself… but Old Phyrexia was explicitly an artificial plane created by one planeswalker, and yet God Yawgmoth was easily fighting the entirety of Urza and the titans. He shouldn’t have been powerful enough. If what happened was instead that he became a personification of a fundamental principle of reality… then it would explain how. Also, if we interpret the “saw its perfection” as referring to the plane of old phyrexia… why did he terra (xeno?) form it so much? Why bother making the spheres? Via PMH, we can explain all of his actions as steps to align himself with the phyrexian principle. And this naturally leads us to…

PraetorGenesis Hypothesis

A controversial extension of PMH/RRH proposing that the original Phyrexian Praetors were not merely created by Yawgmoth or engineered by Phyrexians, but emerged through a natural resonance event.

The praetors were described as “Being born from the Oil and the Mirran suns” and if we accept that “Phyrexia” is a Principle, then… The Praetors start sounding like Resonant Manifestations. 

The Proposed mechanism is as follows:

• the original Mirran suns acted as a powerful resonance source,
• pristine Phyrexian oil acted as a Principle carrier,
• their interaction produced stable manifestations of Phyrexian ideology and Principles.
• Those manifestations became the Praetors of New Phyrexia.

Potential classification:

• Resonant Manifestations
• possibly artificial or semi-artificial manifestations

So, under this framework… were the Praetors:

• creations of Phyrexia,
• manifestations of the Phyrexian Principle,
• or both?

Other Fun Pairings: Kozilek and Xerex

Xerex is weird. We know little about it, but from what we do know, it seems reality itself on Xerex is… irreducible to literalist interpretations. 

“The literal-minded Phyrexians made the greatest mistake possible on Xerex: they tried to understand what they were seeing.”  [[Vertex Paladin]]

“Phyrexia broke the laws of reality to invade the planes. On Xerex, reality merely bent around the invaders.” [[Xerex Strobe-Knight]]

Which should remind you of someone, a Transplanar Titan whose entire portfolio is about :

• distortion,
• structure,
• impossible geometry,
• perception.

If principles can manifest as people/entities, why not a plane of existence? Makes you think. This is exactly the kind of thing fictional scholars and civilizations would write dissertations about. 

Of course, realistically there’s little to no chance WOTC actually thought about things like this (or even that they fit all canon), but that’s what makes speculative world building so fun. Never feel like you shouldn’t try to find patterns and apply scientific principles to fictional work. You never know what you might end up discovering. If you all want to read the setting/project that led to this, check my post history or message me directly. I'd love to have more eyes on it.

Hello fellow vorthos people! It's me again, you might remember me as the guy who made the Tarkir Dragonlords Theory a while back, and if you were wondering why I dropped off the face of the earth... It's because I spent the better part of a month being totally consumed on a fun what-if that turned into an enormous internally connected setting with its own history, metaphysics, political evolution, color philosophy, civilizations, terminology, and multiple story arcs. I'm finally at a stage where I feel comfortable sharing the work.

However, I need a lot of help polishing it and making sure everything at least stays internally consistent. ChatGPT was great for research and bouncing ideas off of, but it does not and cannot replace another actual Vorthos. So please, I need your help. I've complied the setting and the plots into these glossary documents (formatting done with the help of AI):

• Comprehensive Glossary
• Metaphysics & Manifestation Framework Glossary
• Major Factions & Color Alignment Glossary
• Symbology & Cultural Elements Glossary

I recommend at least reading the first few entries in the metaphysics document (Principle Manifestation Hypothesis (PMH)) before you start reading the plot, sets up a lot of dramatic irony. Contact me here for my discord information. If it gets enough traction I might make a server for it.

PS: Mods, if this is against the rules please tell me how/where I can post it, or relevant discord servers I can join. I really need some help. Also, does anyone know/can contact with the MTG official wiki team? I want to turn this into a wiki at some point and there's so many cross-references with the canon that I'll need to link to the wiki often.

Please feel free to DM me on Reddit if you're interested.

Yesterday, I was playing as ivy and my teammate and I had just defended our blue walker, and we agreed to use my ult to quickly rotate to take a sidelane. However, just as I was ulting he happened to walk under the little veil archway at the back of the blue walker leading to mid-jungle, causing me to lift into the sky above him and both of us to get stuck (as he got stuck on the ceiling of the archway). The only way to fix this was for me to manually fly down to ground level at which point the tether was finally able to pull him to me. At that point half the ult was already gone and there wasn't enough juice left to make it to the sidelanes.

Now, I fully admit that this was mostly skill/communication issue, but my question is, why? Why doesn't the tether just teleport the teammate to ivy? Most of the time that's more or less what happens, but then you get weird interactions like this. If all tethers worked like this than maybe we can just say skill issue and move on but... there's an elephant in the room, that being Yamato's grapple. That thing "can go through walls and does not break connection regardless of distance or visibility". Why does one of Yamato's normal ability get to just teleport through everything and yet, Ivy's ult doesn't? It's not like giving this to ivy is even that big of a buff since Ivy's tether is for her teammates whereas Yamato's makes it impossible escaping for her enemies to get away from her. Seems like a no-brainer QOL update to me.