The Lat-Nam Kerfuffle

It feels good to finally be writing this article. After all, I've been saying one day I would since pretty much the beginning of this blog. So after two years it is high time.

What are we talking about again? Well, way back during the Greensleeves cycle we were shown the destruction of the College of Lat-Nam during the Brothers' War. Recently we covered Jeff Grubb's Ice Age cycle, in which the College continued to exist until shortly after the Ice Age. It's a pretty major revision that intersects with a lot of other ret-cons. There is the nature of the Brothers, the City of Shadows, Lim-Dûl... but while in the cases of the Brothers and Lim-Dûl we simply have to let the old version go and accept the new facts, it's different with Lat-Nam. For starters, there is no book that outright replaces the Greensleeves trilogy. And it would be a real shame to chuck some of the oldest Magic novels out of continuity without a replacement just because some details in the backstory don't match up. Furthermore, while the facts from the two trilogies (and a bunch of other references that were made in between) don't match up, there is so much in-universe time between them that there could very well have been some off-camera events that would explain the apparent inconsistencies. We are talking gaps of centuries or even millennia!

So that's why we are here. To try and find a way to make it all fit together. But first, let's go through all the sources once more, in order of release, to refresh our memory of just what we are talking about.

Forgotten Archive

I am going to cover Coldsnap until... I dunno, sometime next year. But there is one thing that happened close to the release of that set that bears mentioning now. Back then there was a post on the MTGSalvation storyline boards where we tried to figure out what exactly happened with the College of Lat-Nam, the City of Shadows and the School of the Unseen. Please don't go and read it, it has posts from 19 year old me in it and it is all very embarrassing.

The relevant bit is that suddenly Brady Dommermuth, then head of the Creative Department, popped in and shared a number of entries from "an ancient database maintained by Pete Venters and others". Presumably it was part of Pete's work on either the coffee table "Encyclopedia Dominia" book, or the Magic RPG he talked about when he was interviewed by Matt Cavotta. It's all unreleased, and pre-revisionist at that, so it is by no means supposed to be canon, but as always seems to happen in the storyline community all the stuff that wasn't directly contradicted by published sources was accepted as fact anyway.

That alone makes this stuff worthy of a look, to know where some of the "facts" thrown around in storyline debates come from. But it is also relevant for that history of Lat-Nam article I keep promising you all, since it more clearly shows what was considered to be canon at one point, and just how much Jeff Grubb changed. Oh, and it is of course interesting, and rather curious, to see just how much unrevealed lore stuff WotC has kept behind the scenes over the years.

So let's jump in and see just what was "secret" canon once upon a time!

The Shattered Alliance

Writer - Jeff Grubb
Cover Artist - Gary Ruddell
Relased December 2000

SUMMARY
Slightly less of a time jump this time. It is now twenty years after the World Spell, and Terisiare is a little worse for wear. Regions are being flooded, plagues are breaking out, and politically it is in upheaval. The School of the Unseen has emerged from its seclusion and is aiding where it can. Jodah is now the Archmage Emeritus, letting Gerda Äagesdotter do all the hard work. She wanted a promotion so badly that she sold Jodah out to Lim-Dûl last time, so he's punishing her by giving her exactly what she wants. Furthermore, Jodah is scared of the next time he'll be forced to use his mirror to remove the emotions from his memories, as he feels Freyalise did something with the artifact before giving it back to him after casting the World Spell.

Then Jaya Ballard returns with bad news: she found the mummified hand of Lim-Dûl, but the finger that contained Mairsil's ring is gone. Jodah and Jaya immediately head out to track the ring down, to see if their old enemy has resurfaced again.

The Eternal Ice

Writer - Jeff Grubb
Cover Artist - Gary Ruddell
Released May 2000

SUMMARY
It is 2500 years after the last novel, and Jodah is summoned by the necromancer Lim-Dûl. Dûl tells him he's been dead for ages, but that he created this summoning since he has need of the best and brightest sages, as well as the skill at organizing wizards Jodah picked up while he headed the City of Shadows. You see, Dûl has been tasked by his planeswalker master Leshrac to research the rogue plane of Shandalar, and he has another research project on the side: he wants to know how to kill a planeswalker.

Before long though, Jodah is saved by Jaya Ballard. Turns out Jodah never died, having become immortal after that weird dip in that fountain last novel. He's still ruling over the City of Shadows, now called the School of the Unseen, as the Archmage Eternal. His second in command Gerda Äagesdotter got ambitious and sold him out to Lim-Dûl, who kept him amnesiac with Fyndhorn Pollen. Jaya calls in a favor from the planeswalker Freyalise, who apparently knew Jodah in the past, to cure him of the pollen's addictive effect, but then Freyalise reveals Jodah is going insane anyway: to deal with the pressure of being immortal he has been doing a ritual every few generations, in which he uses his magic mirror to remove the emotions from his memories. Gerda jumped him while doing that ritual, so now all his emotions of the past 2500 years are catching up with him. Freyalise might be able to give some hints on how to have him survive, but in exchange Jaya and Jodah now owe her a favor.

The Gathering Dark

Writer - Jeff Grubb
Cover Artist - Gary Riddell
Released June 1999

SUMMARY
We are back in the Dark Age, between the Sylex Blast and the coming of the ice, and with that comes intolerance, plague and war. We follow the young wizard-in-training Jodah,who is not having a good time during the first half of this book. First he is captured by the inquisition, who kill his mentor Voska. He flees to the city of Alsoor just as it falls under plague quarantine. He gets a job selling folk cures, but his own magical improvements of the healing balms bring the inquisition down on him again. To flee persecution he joins the army, only to have both his fellow soldiers and the opposing army be slaughtered by attacking goblins and giants. Eventually he hooks up with Sima, a wizard of the City of Shadows, who promises to bring him to this mysterious school to study magic in peace. But then he is kidnapped by merfolk working for the Rag Man, who instead leads him to the rival school called the Conclave of Mages.

Still here!

Hi everyone! I thought I'd put up a quick notice for anyone getting impatient with the recent schedule. Don't worry, the project is still going, and I should be able to put up the review of The Gathering Dark next week!

I had wanted to put it up a good while ago, but the day I got back from holiday I was offered a bunch of new responsibilities at work, which severely cut into my free time. Then when the busiest time had passed I was all set to catch up with Multiverse in Review... and then my laptop broke.

Hopefully you can bear one more week of waiting. Once I get my computer back getting the next review up will be priority number one!

~Squirle

Phyrexian Autopsy

Writer - Will McDermott
Originally appeared in The Official Urza's Destiny Game Guide
Reposted online on Will McDermott's site

SUMMARY
Urza pops up on Tolaria and drops off a Negator corpse for dissection. Despite some grumbling about Urza's manners Rayne and Barrin get to work. What follows is a lot of descriptions and technobabble about how Phyrexians are put together, interspersed with them reminiscing about past events, specifically those from Bloodlines. In the end they find a Capashen blood sample the Negator took, cluing them in that a big attack on Benalia is imminent.

The Duelist #39-41 (Urza's Destinty)

And so we reach the final issues of The Duelist. To be honest, there is very little of interest for us here, but as you know I am a completist and I've done all the other issues of this magazine, so let's take a look anyway.

Bloodlines

Writer - Loren L. Coleman
Cover art - Kev Walker
Released August 1999

SUMMARY
Bloodlines spans the centuries between Time Streams and Rath and Storm, and takes us to various corners of Dominaria and Rath, showing what was going on there in the build up to Gerrard's adventures with the Weatherlight. It ends up being more a collection of overlapping stories than one single narrative.

First there is Tolaria, where Urza has embarked on a eugenics project to create the Heir to the Legacy, someone who can understand how to defeat the Phyrexians by having a certain affinity for them without being tempted to their side. Breeding starts in the fast-time zones, but the subjects there lose their bonds to Dominaria's mana, and with that their empathy. So Urza starts to manipulate bloodlines all over the plane in all sorts of ways, from arranged marriages to gene manipulation in fetuses. Throughout the book the Tolarian characters keep discussing the ethics of this project, but while individuals occasionally opt out, the project itself just keeps going.

Scars of the Legacy

Writer - Will McDermott
Original appeared in The Official Urza's Legacy Game Guide
Released online on Will McDermott's website

SUMMARY
Like Time for Remembrance, this story is mostly a summary, though here the framing sequence is more extended. It features Jhoira's last mission as captain of the Weatherlight, in which she goes to Zhalfir to drop off some of the refugees from Serra's Realm. She and Karn meet with Teferi and they reminisce about their adventures together. Then at the end of the evening, Teferi proposes to Jhoira! But she wants to live her own life after years of following Urza, and so decides to turn him down and return to Shiv.

The Duelist #35-38 (Urza's Legacy)

In the period we're currently discussing the novel line was really hitting its stride. After some early weirdness we now have a book for every set, the anthology line has kicked off and soon we'll look at the first trilogy covering older sets. The flipside of that though, is that The Duelist seems to no longer know what to do with the storyline. Features appear in one issue only to be gone in the next and after Born to Greatness wraps-up the level of lore is down in general. I guess that makes sense. Wizards is fully invested into the novels at this point, and if you want people to buy your books you don't go spoiling their stories elsewhere. But don't worry, it's not as bad as around the days of Odyssey and Onslaught, when we will end up in a situation where the books were essentially on their own, with very little connection to even the cards. With Urza's mug on so many cards in his titular block, Wizards is pretty much obliged to cover the storyline in some fashion in their magazine. They just weren't sure how.

LORE
I guess the main attraction here is issue 36's "Past mistakes, Future hope" article, which tells the story of Urza's Legacy. It's not that interesting to us, as it is basically just a summary of Time Streams, which I already covered. There is one illuminating thing in there though. Since it covers the set Urza's Legacy rather than the novel Time Streams, it considers the Tolarian disaster and the Phyrexians attacking Serra's Realm past events. After all, those were already shown in Urza's Saga. Thus it is able to describe the plot of Urza's Legacy as Urza having to return to the scenes of his greatest failures: Tolaria, Serra's Realm and Argoth (by proxy of Yavimaya). I had never thought of it that way, but it does make the split between Saga and Legacy less arbitrary. Saga shows Urza's string of past mistakes, while Legacy is him making amends.

Of course, there is still the odd gear change in Saga when we go from Urza hanging out with Xantcha to him and Barrin building the academy, and Shiv has little to do with this past/amends split, but hey. You can't have everything.

Time Streams

SUMMARY
Since we last saw Urza he has hooked up with Barrin and has founded the Tolarian Academy. There they gather promising wizards and artificers from all over Dominaria and have them work on ways to combat Phyrexia in secret. Not even the students themselves know just what they are working on. Urza, who now goes by the name Malzra, is planning to travel back in time to defeat the Phyrexians before they became a thread. Since silver is the only material capable of surviving the stresses of time travel he creates a golem from the stuff. Xantcha's Heartstone is put in the golem's head, and somehow it gives him a personality of its own. This golem is of course our old friend Karn (Though one of the students, a prankster named Teferi, initially calls him Artie Shovelhead)

Keeping your plans secret from your students turns out to be a bad idea. Karn's best friend, Jhoira, is pining for a lover and thus when she discovers the shipwrecked hottie Kerrick she decides to keep him hidden from the teachers. Unfortunately, Kerrick is actually the Phyrexian Sleeper Agent K'rrick. After gathering enough information through Jhoira he summons a bunch of Phyrexian Negators who slaughter their way through the academy. With only Urza and Karn left, the golem is send back in time. He manages to stop Kerrick from summoning his troops, but the time machine overheats and- BOOM!

A Time for Remembrance

Writer - Will McDermott
Originally appeared in The Official Guide to Urza's Saga
Rereleased online on Will McDermott's website.

SUMMARY
Urza returns to Phyrexia after his cameo on Mind over Matter, informing Barrin about the events of Rath block. The callous way Urza talks about the crew, not even bothering to tell Barrin whether his daughter is safe, gets to the old wizard. He starts writing a letter to Hanna in which he explains his antipathy towards her desire to study artifact by telling her the history of Urza. In the end he realizes he can never send the letter and burns it.

REVIEW
This is one of the strangest parts of the canon. Not because of its content, as much weirder stuff can be found in various anthologies, nor because of its format, considering this canon includes games, choose-your-own-adventures and viral marketing campaigns. Not even because of its obscurity, as we have already looked at much harder to find stuff. No, it is weird because it is one of the most pointless, skippable stories in Magic history, yet simultaneously almost compulsory reading for anyone interested in the Weatherlight Saga. Let me try to explain.

The Duelist #31-34 (Urza's Saga)

When we looked at the Exodus issues of The Duelist I mentioned that with the sudden departure of Pete Venters there suddenly was a lot less lore in the magazine. The effects of that are still seen here. Issue 31 introduces a new feature called "Forgotten Lore", which is really just a renaming of the old "From the Library of Leng" articles, which focus on the lore of an individual card. This will turn out to be an irregular feature though. Dominian FAQ makes a new appearance in issue 34, only to be forgotten about again. Sets will still be accompanied with an article telling their story, but the length and depth of those articles varies greatly. The bottom line is the while there is plenty of stuff in here that will interest Vorthosi, it does come across a bit chaotic, like the magazine doesn't really know what it wants to do with the storyline.

LORE

Let's first talk about the story of Urza's Saga in general. Issue 32 has a 6 page article on how it was created. It has since been reprinted on Magicthegathering.com. There is very little lore in the article itself, instead it deals with the behind the scenes process, but it prints a number of pictures taken from the style guide, which is always awesome to see.

Planeswalker

Planeswalker
Writer - Lynn Abbey
Cover Art - R.K. Post
Released September 1998

SUMMARY
We start with a prologue from Urza's point of view. He returns to Koilos a few years after the Sylex Blast and decides to blame all his woes on the Phyrexians. We then skip about 3000 years and see the rest of the story through the eyes of Xantcha, a Phyrexian Sleeper Agent who rebelled against her masters and is now trying to get Urza to focus on fighting against Phyrexia. Unfortunately Urza has gone completely stark raving mad in the intervening years. The story keeps switching between Xantcha and Urza in the present day on Dominaria and their previous adventures across the Multiverse.

The Colors of Magic

The Colors of Magic
Editor - Jeff Lebow
Cover Art - Gary Ruddell
Released February 1999

What? You thought that after Artifacts Cycle - Book I we were going to do Artifacts Cycle - Book II? Nah, we are going to look at this other thing first!

Actually, in the future I do plan to finish the book cycles before covering any anthologies or other books released simultaneously. That's much more convenient when it comes to summarizing and figuring out continuity and timeline stuff. This is something of a special case though. For starters, the Artifacts Cycle is very episodic, with most of Planeswalker taking place centuries to millennia after The Brothers' War and having a whole new setting and cast, save for Urza. More importantly though, The Colors of Magic is supposed to take place in the wake of The Brothers' War, showing what happened to Dominaria after the Sylex Blast. We'll see that some of the writers had very liberal interpretations of  what "in the wake of" means, but since a number of stories do happen directly after the Sylex Blast, and some of them even pick up on the later lives of some minor characters from The Brothers' War, I thought it was best to look at it now, with that story still fresh in mind.

Angel of Vengeance, by Richard Lee Byers
Our first story sees the angle Kotara being summoned by a civic guildmage called Sabul Hajeen. Sabul's brother has been murdered, and he sends Kotara out to kill the murder, who escaped Zhalfirin justice. After that though, he starts having her kill accomplices and relatives of the killer. These evil acts start having their effect on Kotara, who changes both physically and mentally, losing her radiance and her connection to "the Divine Will". Eventually this frees her of her summons, as in the end she is no longer a creature of white mana, and thus unaffected by Sabul's summoning spell. When the family of the killer summons a demon to kill their opponent though, Kotara realizes that even despite her now being a fallen angel, it would still be wrong to let the demon wreak havoc in Zhalfir. Thus she returns and sacrifices her life so Sabul, who has seen the error of his ways, has the time to cast a killing spell on the demon.

The Duelist #3-4 (Fallen Empires)

This time I cover the last two issues of The Duelist I had skipped on account of not having a copy of them before. There isn't a whole lot of stuff in here so it will be a short review, but don't worry, I'll be back to the Weatherlight-era books after this!

Once more I must thank Mike Linnemann for allowing me a look at these old issues!

FALLEN EMPIRES
Issue three has the official Wizards coverage of the Fallen Empires story. It's a one paragraph explanation of the situation in Sarpadia, with its various empires and rebellions, followed up with three pages of letters supposedly written during that time. The first letter is from a bunch of besieged dwarves asking the Havenwood elves for help. The elves decline because they are to busy with the Thallid rebellion but promising to send the letter on to the Icatians. The Icatian say they can't help either but will pass the request on to the Ebon Hand.The Ebon Hand do promising help, but the final letter from the Dwarves reveals that the mercenaries they send have joined the attacking orcs. Oh, and there is a back and forth between Vodalia and Icatia in there as well, with the Vodalians asking for medicine and Icatia saying they don't even have enough for themselves.

The Brothers' War

The Brothers' War
Writer - Jeff Grubb
Cover art - R.K. Post
Released May 1998

SUMMARY
The Urza-Mishra War comic ended with a meeting between Tawnos and Ashnod, the second-in-commands of Urza and Mishra, so it's appropriate that The Brothers' War prologue starts with a meeting between those two. But where the comic promises an alliance that "changed the course of the war", here it is an exercise in futility. Both of them realize that there is too much bad blood between them and between the brothers to do anything but fight until either side wins. They even think there never was a time when the brothers got along... smash cut to just such a time, over 50 years earlier.

The Duelist #1-2 & The Duelist Supplement 1994 (Arabian Nights & Antiquities)

Let me open with thanking the amazing Mike Linneman for providing me with scans of these issues, allowing me to finally complete my look at the pre-rev issues of The Duelist! I'd tell you all to go read his articles over on GatheringMagic.com, but considering the difference in hits between my blog and that site you probably already are.

The main point of interest here is the original telling of the Antiquities story from the supplement, though I'll also quickly go through some interesting sounding stuff from the first two proper issues. Or just the first one really, there isn't any lore stuff in number two.

For the sake of clarity: the supplement is sometimes called #0 or #1.5 online. Apparently there were also versions in 1995 and 1996. I haven't been able to find out much about those, but I'm assuming they don't have lore relevance. The 1995 has a cool cover though.

Rath block wrap-up & continuity overview.

Up to now I've looked at all the parts of Rath block individually. Now it is time to take a step back and look at the big picture. Al the various media outlets were meant to go hand in hand, each focusing on a different aspect of the story but creating a bigger picture when all taken together. So how did that work out? Does the story hold up? Do we like this format, and what can Wizards learn from Tempest block now we are returning to a similar set up? Can we make sense of the continuity between all these versions, and will I finally update the timeline? Lot's of things to do, so let's go and look at all of Rath block in one go!

Sort off.

Born to Greatness

Part one: Born to Greatness
Part two: The Beckoning Sky
Part three: Never to be Free
Written by J. Robert King
Appeared in The Duelist #29, 32 & 34.

SUMMARY
We start on a dark night, with a twelve year old Crovax reading a book about his favorite hero: Lord Windgrace. Suddenly he hears singing coming from his dad's parlor. He's not only forbidden from entering there, but it is said to be haunted by a ghostly hag. With his head still full of adventure stories he goes in anyway, and discovers an amulet. When he picks it up Selenia appears, who says she has to obey the owner of the amulet. A random comment from the young boy makes the angel smile, and that smile seems to be enough to get him to fall in love with her. Being a kid he first tries to command Selenia to be happy, but she tells him she can't be truly happy until she is free. Crovax immediately tries to find something hard to break the amulet, but stops when he sees the bust of his father. He vows instead to free her when he is a man and can stand up to his father.

The Art of Magic the Gathering: The Rath Cycle

As this is one of the few books I do not have in my personal collection, let me start by giving many thanks to reader, commenter and occasional spellchecker Leonardo for providing me with the opportunity to do this review!

REVIEW
I've been doing this blog for little over a year now, and looking back I see that I've deviated a lot from my original planning. Partially for fun reasons, like people lending me books or magazines I do not own, allowing me to review them anyway. Other times it was just real life getting in the way, leading to delays. It really annoys me when that happens, but it turns out some good did come from it, as I am now writing my reviews of the Rath stories around the time Battle for Zendikar block is current. Reviews the first block that told the story through the cards, kicked of an ongoing storyline and came with an art book, while Wizards has just returned to showing the story in the cards, kicks of their new ongoing storyline and released their second art book? (Even called "The Art of Magic the Gathering: Zendikar", as if it is part of a series alongside the work I'm looking at today!) It's all very serendipitous, and you can certainly expect a comparison between the two blocks in my Rath block wrap-up article!

So, let's make this review a little more topical and put it side by side Magic's newest publication. They both have gorgeous art and plenty of lore tidbits, and are each well worth your time. Zendikar gives more space to exploring the plane, while Rath Cycle gives more attention to the characters, which is to be expected. Currently we are just coming of a years long stretch in which worldbuilding was the primary job of the creative team, so obviously they'd want to show of the world. Plus the Weatherlight has a literal boatload of characters while the Gatewatch, so far, only has four. I think Rath Cycle is my favorite of the two, partially because of nostalgia, and partially because it makes extensive use of sketches and paintings from the style guide and comes with some interesting behind the scenes information from the designers. Zendikar only has a handful of arts not taken from the cards and is written much more from an in universe viewpoint. The downside of Rath Cycle is that it keeps a lot of backstory deliberately mysterious, saving it for future stories, whereas Zendikar goes into great detail on the backstory of the plane, the Eldrazi, the planeswalkers and the current story. It almost feels like an encyclopedia of the Zendikar story, whereas Rath Cycle is much more of a companion piece to all the other media outlets that the Weatherlight story appeared in.

And... what more is there to say? The art is beautiful, as you would expect of a Magic the Gathering product, and that alone is enough to make me want to track down the book anyway, despite no longer needing it for my project. Lorewise it is not essential, but does contain a number of interesting facts that I will cover below.

Rath and Storm

SUMMARY
The structure of this book is unique in the Magic canon. Technically it is, as the cover states, an anthology, with each individual story focusing on a different character and written by a different author. However, unlike all Magic's other anthologies, the stories together make up one big one covering the entirety of the Weatherlight's adventures on Rath. Everything is tied together with a framing sequence of a young boy called Ilcaster being told the saga by an old librarian, somewhere in the future. In these sequences the librarian also summarizes a bunch of stuff that was already covered in other versions of the story, like the flashbacks from Gerrard's Quest, or Starke re-joining the ship from Maelstrom.

Previously when I reviewed anthologies I discussed all of the stories separately. Here however, there is not much difference in the style of the stories. With everyone striving for pretty much the same tone and working from the same plot outline the individual quirks and favored tropes of the authors are not very noticeable. So this time I'll mostly just summarize the stories, before doing an overall review at the end.

Obviously we have already seen most of the plot here in the summary of Weatherlight and the storyboards of Tempest block in The Duelist (Here, here, here and here) and in Gerrard's Quest, but there's actually a lot added here, so it's worth taking a closer look.

Gerrard's Tale, by Michael Ryan
(At least, he's credited as that at the start of the story. In the blurb about him at the start he's called Michael G. Ryan, and in the list of authors at the back only as Mike Ryan.)

We already saw mister Ryan chronicle how Gerrard rejoined the crew in Torrent, but here he gets to do so again. This time we learn that Gerrard was training soldiers of the Benalish army, but that a guild of assassins was hiring his students out from under him. When Tahngarth tells him of Sisay's capture, he first has the minotaur help him solve this problem. In the end the master assassin is arrested and Gerrard gives the corrupt general that helped the assassins the opportunity to save his honor by committing suicide.

Gerrard's friend Pol Cordel is missing from this story, but contrary to what I remembered when I reviewed Torrent, the hourglass pendant does actually show up. Gerrard leaves it somewhere before leaving Benalia. That happens off screen, so the scenes with Pol could still have happened between the lines. Unfortunately that still leaves us with two contradictory scenes of how Gerrard and Tahngarth met. Here the minotaur turns up at his work, rather than Gerrard finding him about to clobber an annoying missionary.

Gerrard's Quest #1-4

 

"Separations" (no idea what that is to be honest) are just credited to "Dark Horse Digital" in the other three issues.

Before I get into the comic itself, my apologies for not updating the blog all that often in the past month. Work, the holidays and some personal stuff all took priority. For the foreseeable future I am planning to do a review every other week. That's not as often as I would like, but it would be nice to get back to some sort of regular schedule, and for now that means a slightly slower pace. Hopefully I'll be able to go back to weekly reviews in the future!

With that announcement out of the way... Gerrard's Quest!

SUMMARY
Issue one starts with the Weatherlight coming to Rath. Gerrard is mopey about having been manipulated all his life, and about the fact that people are probably going to die "because of him". He then flashes back to the day he left the Weatherlight, years before. Back then Volrath's forces had invaded Urborg and killed Crovax's father to draw the Weatherlight to them. In the subsequent battle Gerrard's friend Rofellos was killed by Gallowbraid. The baddies are chased of by Selenia, but the angel herself... well, after the battle Crovax destroys the artifact he used to summon her and she is also teleported to Rath, but whether it's Volrath's forces dragging her through a portal or whether the artifact was keeping her on Dominaria isn't entirely clear from the art. During the battle one of the minions called out Gerrard's name, which makes him realize the things were after him, not Crovax. He confronts Sisay over this, who reveals that her parents were allies of Gerrard's parents, as well as his adoptive dad Sidar Kondo and his mentor Multani. He learns that "Those who serve the Legacy" had been grooming him to destroy the Lord of the Wastes. Gerrard, mad at the deception and the death of his friend, quits. His flashback ends just in time for the final splash page that shows the Predator attacking.