Hi everyone,
Does anyone know what are these straight structures under Boseiju? They seem to be its roots, but if so, why are they so straight? The first time I saw the artwork I thought it had grown on top of a skyscraper .
Complete speculation:
[[Arcanis the Omnipotent]] is an absolute ringer for Jace for reality fracture. A blue mage capable of teleporting to a space you cannot follow (returning to hand is a return to the meditation realm) who can give you secret knowledge (draw 3), who (per flavor text) has journeyed far and has returned to “make sure none shall follow.” His name is cool but basically just means “wizard guy.”
Further speculation would be why is he there in the pits? Kamahl’s sword is made of a powerful artifact made of Urza’s staff, the nexus event of the creation of Karona (a WUBRG powerhouse), and at least one powerful planeswalker (Jeska). Plus Mirari shenanigans which is another energy battery and I believe deeply connected to Mirrodin.
To me, it's Ormendahl, I just looooooooooove him, the art, the design, the effect and emotion in the scene he is in. I put westvale abbey in all of my deck just to have him in no matter what
Do you think they are building up to a twist reveal that the Kenrith Twins' mother is a pre-existing character, a witch from an earlier set in Magic's history? Like how it turns out >!Oko is Kellan's dad and Maralen's brother!< ? Or are they keeping her unnamed for when they have a cool character idea for her?
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:
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.
A few of mine.
I posted this about a year ago, and a little less than a year ago before that. Goddamn does time fly.
Anyway...
I love Ikoria. I spent quite a long time absolutely obsessed with the set. I've collected every card (including cards set on Ikoria from other sets) and memorized them all. I've written fanfictions, though in retrospect they were all very mediocre. I've made a bunch of D&D content, though I ended up mistplacing most of it. And I've made a massive map made up of dozens of small maps which, when put next to one another, make a map of the plane. It's a pretty overlooked set, but it fascinated me. My goal was to know more about the plane than anyone else on the planet. While I doubt I succeeded in that regard, I'd like to think I got pretty damn close. So ask me anything.
It might take me a while to respond to some of you, but I'll try my best.
Hopefully the repetition of this post is appreciated rather than annoying.
In Magic the Gathering, tutoring and drawing cards are an analogy for learning. In the color black specifically, they do this through the sacrifice of their health in exchange for knowledge.
On one end of the spectrum is Dark Confidant, who draws you a card and then you lose life based on the mana cost of the card. If it's a land card you lose nothing, but if it's a Blightsteel Colossus you might lose 12 life. On the other side of that spectrum is Griselbrand, who lets you draw 7 cards for 7 life. You can't cheat his system by paying less life for cards, you have to pay 7 and you have to draw 7. If each card drawn is equivalent to 1 life then the 0 cost land might have hurt you a bit, but the 12 mana colossus also hurts you for 1 all the same. In the middle of this is Villis, Broker of Blood who can let you draw cards per life lost. You can go to him directly for a blood offering of 2 life for 2 cards or he'll let you draw as you lose your life naturally.
Obviously, in game there are cost implications like how Dark Confidant is 2 cost and also a human while Griselbrand costs 8 and is also an archdemon, but the implication is that Griselbrand is better at the contract between you and him, where he will do it more efficiently at possibly even less risk to yourself. Meanwhile, Villis seems more conniving, he's fine with you getting something at even a discount, but he's waiting for all of your life to go so he can collect.
On the other hand, the art that depicts Demonic Tutor, Diabolic Tutor, and Grim Tutor. Grim Tutor implies that you attempted to do it all on your own through a sacrifice of blood which is why it costs 3 life. Demonic Tutor shows that you are speaking directly to the demon itself which is why it's free while Diabolic Tutor implies that you are talking not to a demon but to a denizen of the underworld.
Gavin Verhey has mentioned that dead characters without a current in-story counterpart will not appear in the main set of Reality Fracture, but could appear in the Commander deck.
What characters that are either dead, or just Jace related, would you like to see new cards or reprints for in the new Precon?
For me, I'd love to see an official [[Kallis Rhoka]] card, of course a Gideon that never died, and personally, I think it'd be fun to see his buds Malcolm and Breeches again, regardless of how altered by the new timeline they are.
EDIT: How could I forget the beautifulest boy in Dack Fayden??
Now that we have Zhalfir scheduled, I'm wondering what already established planes that haven't had sets you most want to see?
For me, it is the windy plane if Belenon. Its cards fascinate me, and I would love to see a set where wind is a huge part of the theme. It would be a perfect set to bring back Flagbearers and Verse counters.
Music and musical instruments could be a big part too. Make interesting equipment.
And do we know anything more from the Tales of the Ozolith?
One question: Klauth, Unrivaled Ancient, which came out in SLD. Is it the only artwork with the modern design of Dragons in D&D?
I haven't found any for the other chromatic or metallic dragons.
Previews for Reality Fracture are not doubt gonna start soonish given that the set premieres right at the beginning of October, so story should come out before those start right
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:
It’s very simple. Just three laws:
An extension of PMH.
Under these frameworks, we can classify certain manifestations further. For now, let’s focus on two categories:
Okay, how can we apply this, you ask? Well…
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:
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…
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:
Potential classification:
So, under this framework… were the Praetors:
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 :
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.