Shards of Alara Online

Right. How am I going to do this with the current state of the Magic website? 

Well, I've gone to the Wiki, checked out the articles linked on the bottom of the Alara page and everything from the Savor the Flavor page. That should give me the initial introduction to the setting, and what stories need to be put onto the timeline, plus whatever else might turn up in the main storyline column. To actually read those articles I can look them up on MaxMakesMagic's listing of articles in the Internet Archive. All of which was enough of a pain in the back that I didn't feel like trying to track down all the Arcana's and Card of the Day entries. Maybe I'll return for those some day. Maybe. For now, let's first dive into the introduction of one of my favorite planes!

INTRODUCING FIVE NEW WORLDS

As always, we start with a handful of feature articles (Alara, a World Broken, Ripping a World Apart & A Shards Day's Night), and a Mini Site (split in various parts: Five Worlds, Life Imitates Mana, Fiends and Behemoths & Planeswalkers of Alara). I also found this reference to something called "Alara Explorer" on the Mini Site, which sounds cool, but unfortunately I can't find it anywhere.

Finally there is Planes of Existence: Alara, which is dated July 25, 2008, which is before all the other stuff. I think that's just because it got pre-dated to the launch of the (then) new version of the website though.

Also, I thought the Shard-murals were from the mini-site, but if they were I can't find those either. Maybe they were in the explore section? Thanks to this Magic art Tumblr for compiling them.

These introduce us to Alara and the five shards, though mostly on a level you can also get from just scrolling to the sets on Scryfall. We've already gone into more details in the Planeswalker's Guide. Though here we also get the first information that didn't actually make it into the guide! For example, in the following description of the sundering:

"The cause of this cataclysm has been lost to time. Some ancient lore of the Shards suggest a being of godlike power forcibly split Alara to seize its mana for himself. Some believe it was caused by the titanic battle for the fate of Alara, waged by the archangel Asha and the demon Malfegor. But for most, only the dimmest cultural memories remain of a richer world that existed before their own."

The Asha/Malfegor stuff was not in the guide, which just outright states it was a planeswalker who drained Alara for mana. Which the mini site also does. Funny how, just like with Liliana and her demons, one article is keeping things mysterious while the other just outright states what happened!

The mini-site is also the place where we get the reference that the sundering happened millennia ago. I'm still leaning to putting the event "centuries" ago, since that's the more consistently given time period, but this certainly muddles things up.

SAVOR THE FLAVOR

The Savor the Flavor articles introduce the separate planes further, but too be honest they don't cover all that much that wasn't already in the Planeswalker's Guide either. Maybe that was another strike against the guide's success. At this point there were weekly free articles delving into the world, so why spend money to get a book that majorly overlaps with the information covered here? You do get more there, like the names of different castes of kathari, or a single paragraph on some characters that never show up anywhere else, but that is really only interesting for the biggest completists. By the time we get to the Art of Magic the Gathering series these articles had long since been replaced by weekly stories, leaving a gap in the market for more in-depth worldbuilding.

Other than that these articles are mostly about how flavor text is done, the flavor of Magic's zones, how to do curse words in fantasy fiction (and I think I know exactly which chapter of Alara Unbroken Doug Beyer was writing at the same time as that article) and one about a massive six piece art swap. Whether it is because the Planeswalker's Guide was already out, or because it simply wasn't Doug's style, we don't get any deep delves into the stories of individual cards here. There is one actual story though!

Encounter at the Necropolis, by Doug Beyer.

Eliza (from the flavor text of Grixis Charm and that one paragraph in the Planeswalker's Guide) tricks the archdemon currently ruling the necropolis Unx to leave it undefended. Then she successfully bluffs Sedris when he tries to conquer it at the same time as her.

It's a fine short story, giving us a quick glimpse into the constant warfare of Grixis, and it's a nice character showcase of one of the few powerful humans on the shard. Nothing essential, but it is nice to have Grixis featured a bit more than it will be in the Alara Unbroken novel, where it will only show up in the Alara Reborn section of the story, and mostly just function as a threat for the other planes.

Timelinewise I'm invoking the old rule "if there is nothing specific to its placement but it's tied to a set, that's where I'll place it", so it goes right in front of Alara Unbroken.

And eh... that's it! There'll be a bit more to say about the Conflux and Alara Reborn coverage, when we've gone beyond the Guide. There'll be more stories there as well. Although I must say doing a bunch of short articles like these does make it easier to keep up the momentum of the blog ;)

Next week another webcomic, and our first proper introduction to Ajani!