Alara Unbroken

Writer - Doug Beyer

Cover Artist - Chris Rahn

First Printing - ...is not given in the colofon? But it's May 2009 according to the wiki.

I guess this book was never printed, and just miraculously appeared in stores one day?

SUMMARY
The book is split up in three parts, corresponding to the sets of Alara block.

Part One

After an prologue on Grixis, in which we see Nicol Bolas bossing around Malfegor and planning to use the convergence of the shards to regain his vitality, we get stories set on Bant, Jund & Naya.

On Bant Gwafa Hazid destroys Giltspire Castle to uncover the obelisk it was build upon, and Rafiq and his rhox pall Mubin are sent after him. They catch him, just as the world starts to tremble in an early warning of the Conflux.

On Jund Sarkhan Vol meets Kresh and his tribe, who are being goaded into battle against a dragon by Rakka Mar. That all turns out to be a diversion so she can blow up the beast's lair, revealing another obelisk.

And on Naya we start with an expanded version of Flight of the White Cat, with a spell capsule creating monsters that attack the nacatl, Jazal being killed, Ajani ascending and ending up on Jund, and him meeting Sarkhan (after the latter's journey with Kresh and Rakka). Rather than immediately going "vengeant" like in the comic though, he planeswalks back to Naya and ends up at to the ruins of the Coil, where a strange old woman goads him into swearing to kill whoever murdered Jazal.

Part Two

Again we get a prologue with Bolas. This time he's visiting Naya, and ordering Marisi to whip up the elves into a war.

Sarkhan meets Rakka Mar again, who introduces him to Bolas, to whom he swears allegiance, seeing him as the pinnacle of dragonhood. He then heads to Esper, where he and some Seekers of Carmot take control of the lighthouse at the Cliffs of Ot, before using the lighthouse keeper as bait to get a leviathan to smash the coral covering yet another obelisk.

Ajani goes after Tenoch, his bully who is now poised to become the new kha. Tenoch says he wasn't behind the attack on the camp, but that his mother, the shaman Chimamatl, knew something bad was coming. Ajani tries to throw him off a cliff, but in the scuffle he falls down himself. Grievously injured he planeswalks in the hope of finding help, and ends up on Bant, next to Elspeth, who is living a happy life while hiding her magical capabilities and her planeswalkerhood. She has Bantian clerics heal Ajani, after which he returns to Naya to face Chimamatl. She tells him she knew something was coming because Marisi told her so.

Ajani catches up with Marisi just as the elder nacatl has placed another spell capsule near the Relic of Progenitus. Marisi makes an attempt at getting Ajani to kill him just to get out from under Bolas's control, but the two are separated by another earthquake. Then Mayael shows up at the Relic and tries to talk to Progenitus, but the capsule interferes and Bolas gives her a vision of her god telling her to go to war.

And then the shards begin to merge.

Part Three

The final part is about half the book. Makes sense, since the previous two parts mostly just expand upon stuff we already knew from the online coverage, but at the point this novel was released we knew little about Alara Reborn beyond the previews on the minisite saying "there's gonna be war and chaos!".

Malfegor takes Torchlight, the last human stronghold on Grixis. Then Bolas sends him to Bant, as the obelisk there isn't working properly. Apparently Gwafa (who was in the dark about exactly what was going to happen when Bolas hired him) didn't destroy all the wards placed on the thing. Bolas then moves on to Sarkhan and gives him control of a bunch of dragons, including Karrthus, and sends him into Naya.

On Naya, Marisi takes control of the Wild Nacatl. But Ajani's friend Zaliki takes Jazal's notes and flees to the Cloud Nacatl. She's figured out that Marisi is going for the final obelisk, which lies in Qasal. It is revealed she planted the artifact that killed Jazal, on Marisi's orders, though she thought it would just scare the pride with an illusion.

On Bant, the Order of the Skyward Eye convinces the people to go to war with Esper, making Rafiq their general. The Esperites (presumably egged on by the Seekers of Carmot, though we don't see their side of the conflict) are too much for them though. Rafiq fights Mubin after his friend becomes mind controlled and is forced to deal him a wound that leaves the rhox paralyzed. Later, while invading Esper, Rafiq acquires a box of carmot/sangrite the Esperites were bringing from Jund. During a scouting mission in Grixis he also saves a couple of from Torchlight. The man convinces him to capture his zombified son to try and heal him. When that fails, the mother is forced to behead her son. Over the cause of these events, Rafiq's Bantian innocence slowly dies. Still, discovering Malfegor is marching on Bant, he rushes home to save his people. (And yeah, the pacing of the story goes into overdrive here, with characters marching through entire shards between chapters!)

As all this is going on, in the middle of the Alara, where all the shards meet, the Maelstrom (basically just a big ball of energy) begins to form, growing as the obelisks are channeling into it the mana of all the spells being cast in the various battles.

After the Conflux Ajani ended up next to Kresh, who thinks the white cat is a spirit. Ajani asks for help against Bolas. This delights Kresh, as to get to Bolas they need to go through Rakka Mar, whom he would love to get some vengeance on for dumping a dragon's lair on his tribe. Once they reach the shaman Rakka tries to tempt Ajani, promising to bring him to Bolas if he kills Kresh's clan, but he strikes Rakka down instead.

Back on Bant Mubin researches "the Prayer of Asha", an apocalyptic text the Skyward Eye has been distributing. He figures out the sword of Asha is hidden under the Twelve Trees of Valeron. His request to dig it up is obviously rebuffed at first, but then he returns at night and just digs up one shard of this mythical sword, which convinces the local member of the Blessed caste to listen to him, rather than to her Skyward Eye advisors.

On Naya the Wild Nacatl attack the Cloud Nacatl. In the conflict Zaliki faces off against Marisi. We learn Bolas wanted Jazal dead because he preached unity between the two groups of cat people. Zaliki kills Marisi, but in doing so channels enough mana to explode the Tower of Qasal, revealing the obelisk inside.

Malfegor reaches Bant. His army is faced with that of Rafiq, but he manages to activate the obelisk anyway. Elspeth shows up to give Rafiq the sword Mubin dug up and then uses her +3/+3 and flying ability on him, allowing him to kill the demon-dragon. He even does that anime thing where he makes two slashes with his glowing sword and his enemy splits into parts!

Meanwhile, Sarkhan lures the elvish armies of Naya to the Maelstrom, while Zaliki brings the nacatl by just following the mana streams from the obelisk. Ajani and Kresh also end up there (after apparently just running through Grixis hoping to find Bolas? Let's be generous and say they were somehow tracking him). Sarkhan triggers another battle... but Ajani uses his "ultimate" to sever everyone's magic... Only for Bolas show up and begin absorbing the Maelstrom. 

Bolas is restored as "a divinty of the Multiverse", but Ajani takes what remains of the power of the Maelstrom and summons Bolas's spirit, which is enough to chase him away.

In various epilogues we see Elspeth leaving Alara, as her paradise has been spoiled. So does Sarkhan, laughing madly. Rafiq tries to cure Mubin with the etherium cache he found, but it kills him instead, leaving Rafiq well and truly broken. Finally, the nacatl elders offer kha-ship to Ajani, but he passes it on to Zaliki and leaves the plane as well.

REVIEW
It's kinda funny writing a review about Alara Unbroken in 2023, because the main complaint about the current story is the same one leveled against this novel 14 years ago: it's too short! Getting only one novel for the story of an entire block, whereas we used to get three, certainly had some people miffed. That criticism was perhaps not entirely fair, because we did get the Planeswalker's Guide and Agents of Artifice instead of those two other block novels (it will become a fairer criticism in time, as the Guide never gets a follow up and Planeswalker novels get "indefinitely postponed", but we'll talk about that at some later point), but it's hard to deny that Alara Unbroken feels rushed at times.

We fast-forward through most of the post-Conflux wars, Malfegor and Bolas are ultimately dealt with very quickly, and at times the book does lean on you being familiar with either the sets (which, to be fair, most readers at the time would be) or the Planeswalker's Guide (less likely, given it's poor sales) to skip some worldbuilding. Ultimately though, I think Alara Unbroken just about pulls it off. It manages to tell a coherent story, gives every one in the quite massive cast of characters just enough personality to make you care about them, and builds up the final conflicts just enough to make them satisfying, even if they are brief.

As for why Alara Unbroken gets a passing grade from me, while many of the recent stories left me annoyed, I think there are two main differences between them, one which could be taken into account to improve the current story, and one which can't.

The first is that AU is very good at picking what it does and doesn't cover. Esper getting very little screen time wasn't very popular when the book came out, but it makes sense when it will be extensively featured in Test of Metal down the line, thus limiting it here frees up space for the other Shards. Grixis is also little featured, but had already appeared in Agents of Artifice. More importantly, though the first quarter of this book covers the Shards of Alara set, it doesn't try to do an entire "who is behind all this weird stuff?" mystery. The Bolas reveal was done in Conflux preview season, so here we just open with him telling us his plan. Sure, it would've been great to see the Bolas-mystery play out slowly if we had another novel, but we don't, so best to just skip it.

The other thing AU has going for it, and which the current story isn't going to be able to copy: half a year of build up and another quarter of aftermath through both sets and online coverage. If this book was all we got to see of Alara I would definitely be disappointed, but between really getting to know the plane through three sets of cards, the Guide and online articles, plus getting a bunch more stories set there in the form of webcomics and shorts in Savor the Flavor, Alara has become one of my favorite planes. That's going to be hard to pull of for modern stories though, where the vibe is more "here's a week of stories, enjoy it quickly because the next batch of previews is about to begin!".

Okay, that was a lot of talk about how much story fits in one novel. But what's the actual story like? Well... it's fine. It's a bit of a choppy read, as it is constantly switching perspectives. I quite like that structure, as it fits really well with the divided up nature of Alara at the beginning, but it does go overboard at times. The introduction of Rafiq and Mubin via a trial by combat really didn't need to be split in five miniature chapters! The fact that every chapter starts at the top of a new page also wastes a lot of space, leaving the book a bit slight. It's 373 pages, but a lot of them half empty.

Not the most efficient way of using six consecutive pages, is it?

The story also hinges a lot on vaguely explained meta-magical technobabble. The shards are reforming because of... reasons. The obelisks channel all the spells because... they just do. This forms the Maelstrom because... I dunno. If that sort of stuff annoys you, you're probably not going to like this novel much. Personally I don't mind it, I don't mind MacGuffins in action stories. Though I guess this is another reason why it's good the Bolas mystery gets skipped. If we had spend a good chunk of the book on him manipulating entire nations and cultures into a global war, I would've wanted a more cerebral pay-off than just "I wanted to make a magic thingy".

A few more minor points that stood out to me:

• The Grixis plot feels pretty superflous, just there to add from more trauma to Rafiq, but it's first chapter is just nuts. As Torchlight is attacked Morsath Levac (the dude whose son gets zombified) is running away, spots a statue that is suggested to have been standing there ever since the Sundering, easily picks up the scythe the statue is holding "as he had always suspect it would" (no explanation given why he would think that or why nobody else took it before), goes super saiyan, jumping around cutting zombies in half with this apparent amazing superweapon... and then he just drops it again to flee!? I'm guessing Doug Beyer really wanted to showcase Unscythe, Killer of Kings (though this scythe is never given a name here) and just crammed it in? The result is a ludicrous scene that makes no sense and just raises so many questions. Easily the worst part of the book.
• I've never been a big fan of too-literral applications in-game mechanics in the story, so Ajani using his ultimate to stop people feeding their magics into the Maelstrom falls a bit flat to me. Especially since it's not really explained how he does it. He just lets out "a metaphysical gust", but it does not feel like a natural progression from his established ability of drawing out the strength of other people's souls. Summoning Bolas's soul as an actual spiritual being is also a bit of a stretch, but at least I can buy that due to the power up Ajani had just got from the Maelstrom.

• It was fun to see Elspeth and Ajani in a scene where she is the more experienced one and he is the newbie to planeswalking. Ajani settles into his role as wise mentor so easily we often forget that only four years before War of the Spark he was still a bit of a hot-head and desperate to prove himself to his clan!
• Sometimes the planes feel a bit stereotypical, like when Rafiq is shocked because he's never seen blood on a blade before, but sometimes there are nice subtle touches, like an Esperite hearing Rafiq chuckle and thinking it sounds odd coming from an adult.
• Some chapters are slightly out of order, with Kresh noting he saw Sarkhan lead a dragonflight before the scene where Bolas gives him control of said dragons, or when we see Mubin attacking Elspeth under mind control before the spell is shown to take effect on him. I don't feel like it adds much to the story, which would probably be clearer if it was neatly chronological.
• Alara feels small, with Kresh just randomly running into Sarkhan again, and characters setting out to go places and then immediately arriving there. This might be intentional though, as the big Esperite force massing on Bant is said to be only 2000 strong. Perhaps Alara is just small, like Mirrodin.
• The way Ajani keeps popping up next to people he needs strains credibility a little. When it's Sarkhan or Elspeth I can explain it away as sparks seeking each other out, but when he later shows up right next to Kresh it has to be pure coincidence.

Or was it a very subtle hint that this guy has an unflared spark?
(The answer is no, but it's fun to think about!)

• We never really get a good explanation for why Bolas set the humans after Ajani by spreading the White Cat prophecy. During their confrontation Ajani says "If I'm so insignificant, why the roundabout plot to kill me, Bolas? Why the spells carried by underlings? Why the white cat prophecies? If I'm noting, why go to all that trouble?", but Bolas gives no clear answer, just that he is "prone to theatrics". When Ajani further goads him he gets angry, but then says "Tut, tut ... you almost made me forget what I was here to do", before stepping into the Maelstrom and taking its power. I guess the easiest explanation is just that the prophecy was yet another way to stoke up conflict in the lead up to the Conflux, and that Ajani was just picked because of his distinctive looks and his links to Jazal. I would be remiss if I didn't mention Jay's speculation about Bolas being worried about Ajani as an incarnation of Arahbo though. I don't think there's any proof for that, but it's a very neat way of tying disparate storyline threads together.

Ultimate verdict? Well, Alara Unbroken is certainly a flawed book, partially due to space constraints, and partially due to some really weird decisions (the Scythe thing, the extreme cutting up of certain scenes), so it's not a blanket recommendation for everyone, but personally I quite enjoyed it.

TRIVIA

• As you can see on the pictures of pages above, the Alara Reborn symbol is visible on the side of all pages. I think it would have been neat if the three parts of the novel each showed the symbol of the set they corresponded to. I get why that was thought as not worth the effort though.
• Bolas's hideout is underneath Kederekt on Grixis.
• The story is a bit coy about whether Bolas is restored to pre-walker powers at the end of all this, though it will later be made clear that he isn't. Early on he thinks that "once his plans were properly actualized, he would be able to summon his minions to his lair, fill their tiny brains with his orders, and fling them back across the aether", which we know is still impossible in the post-Mending multiverse (at least, the post-Mending pre-Omenpath multiverse, who knows what is possible now?), and of course the whole plot of War of the Spark hinges on the fact that he's still not back to his old form.
• In this novel we're given a whole bunch more names of people, places and other things that weren't in the Planeswalker's Guide, further strengthening the complaint about that book being annoyingly incomplete. These names include the Knights of the Bright Dove, the Sigil of the Salted Wind, (which is from Jhess), the dragon Malacoth who is hunted by Kresh and Rakka ("his is the roar that shakes Mount Jhal"), Aarsil the Blessed (who is the one who hired Rafiq to track down Gwafa), Iama of the Skyward Eye, the Order of Dawnray, the "Ripclan Tol Durek clan" (sic), the Nel Toth clan (who will become a bit more famous when Meren is printed), the Sigil of the Grand Laurel... most of these are just namedrops without further explanation.
• In addition to Elspeth giving Rafiq a power boost and flying, and Ajani shutting off all the mana flowing into the Maelstrom, we also hear about how Sarkhan's presence "seemed to stir the coals inside warrior's hearts even more than Kresh himself", clearly his +1 ability.

• Rafiq and Mubin are part of the Knights of the Reliquary, which matches the Guide calling Rafiq "Knight-Captain of the Reliquary".
• Bant is at times shown as incredibly innocent, like with Rafiq being shocked about a bloody blade. There does seem to be a caste element to this supposed innocence though, as the guy stabbing Rafiq in the back was ordered to do so by Aarsil of the Blessed as a test. I guess the higher caste people are willing to use the lower castes for dirty jobs, while keeping up pretenses for the middle castes.
• Until the Conflux there had been no thunder, nor earthquakes, on Bant.
• Bant and Naya are said to have mutually intelligible languages. Language issues never come up later in the book either, so I guess it goes for all planes.
• There is one instance of miscommunication though, when Ajani tries to talk with a Leotau, much to the amusement of the Bantians.
• Angels are, "in the old tongue" bantuthroi, which means "flesh of our volition" So... "Bant" means "Flesh"? Or "Volition"?
• As Ajani finds his brother's body we're repeatedly told he's cursing without ever hearing the curse. I suspect that is the bit Beyer was writing around that one Savor the Flavor article on cursing?
• Malfegor had "ruled with impunity" before the Sundering, and "just before the world broke" he killed Asha, the being who had come closest to killing him. I wonder where he ruled from, as before the Sundering Grixis had to deal with Vithia crusading against its necromancers. Perhaps Malfegor was just being nostalgic and his rule was more contested than he remembers it.

CONTINUITY

There's quite a bit to mention in this sections, but the tl;dr is that there are basically a whole lot of hairline fractures in the continuity surrounding Alara. Luckily most of them can be explained away with just a little bit of fan theory, or just by saying "don't pay too much attention to the specific wording of an article". Only the status of Asha (alive according to the Guide, dead for centuries according to this book) is really a big issue. 

Even the small stuff is still a bit annoying from a continuity afficionado's point of view though. I won't make a huge point when the backstory of certain characters were clearly still being developed by the time their first appearances hit print (compare Ajani from the Lorwyn previews to the Ajani here), but the many differences between the Guide and the novel do look very sloppy. I mean... Doug Beyer also cowrote the Guide!

• I've already gone over a few differences between this book and Flight of the Wid Cat in the review of that comic, but it's also worth noting that if Zaliki thought she was just going to scare her tribe away from allying with the Cloud Nacatl, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense that she was begging for forgiveness while placing the spellbomb in the comic. I mean, I guess you could make a case for it, but it would fit better if it had been Marisi himself.

• Bolas is said to have fled Dominaria, "hoping the Mending would've reach him". There is no mention of him (attempting to) flee the multiverse itself, like was said in Future Sight, nor, for obvious reasons, setting up contingency plans at Amonketh.
• Here Kresh the Tol of the clan Antaga. In the Guide he was a member of the Tol Hera tribe, and it was explicitly stated he "doesn't want the headaches of leadership". So "Tol" is now a leader's title rather than a tribal name, the tribe changed from the Hera to the Antaga, and Kresh went from a warrior who doesn't want to lead to a leader... Oh, and the Guide says the Tol Hera is lead by a guy called Javid Hera, but here the previous leader of the Antaga was a woman... Either the interplanar tourist agency responsible for the Guide is pretty dreadful at their job, or a heck of a lot went down on Jund after their visit... Kresh's wiki entry assumes the Antaga split off from the Hera, which is as good an explanation as any, though as far as I know there is no actual proof of that.
• On Sarkhan's (as yet unnamed) home plane dragons have been almost hunted to extinction. Once we actually get to Tarkir that "almost" will be dropped.
• In the Guide review I said Sarkhan's backstory would be expanded with him leaving the shamanic circle he was apart off before being touched by Ugin's spirit and ascending, but that expansion actually happens here! (Well, Ugin is not yet named, but other than that the story comes from this novel.)

• Torchlight is said to be the last stronghold of the living humans on Grixis after Malfegor took Kederekt. Which isn't quite how the Guide described the situation. There Kederekt was already a necropolis, but there were still several other hermitages in addition to Torchlight.
• At one point Bolas tells Malfegor that if he doesn't behave he'll replace him with Sedris or Caladessa, the latter being one of his minions mentioned in Agents of Artifice.
• Elspeth hasn't seen Leonin before, but has heard about them on her travels, presumably during the short visit to Theros we'll learn about when we get to that set.
• During the Conflux the Eternal Crags on Jund collapse, revealing Grixis behind it, which is... a bit straightforward, after Doug spend an entire Savor the Flavor article talking about how the planes don't just fit together as pizza wedges.
• Bolas mentions Serra at one point. Sarkhan has no idea who she is.
• It's not just Malfegor who knows Asha's true fate, Rafiq grew up wondering why she died. So... then why does the PW Guide say she still rules?
• After Jazal's death, Ajani's pride continues to exists, until it is subsumed into Marisi's new army. Which doesn't match earlier depictions of his backstory as given in the Lorwyn Player's Guide and repeated in the Alara Planeswalker's Guide.
• Elspeth has a bunch of scenes with a knight Mardis, and talks with him just before planeswalking away in the end. There will be an Elspeth webcomic later which has a somewhat similar, though far less awkward, relationship with her squire Aran. There is of course no Aran mentioned here, nor any Mardis mentioned there.

TIMELINE

The Visual Guide puts Alara at 4556 AR, so that's where this novel is going to go.

There's a whole bunch of temporal references in the book, but unfortunately most of them are either pretty vague, or for pretty minor events. Nothing that will help us place the fall of Vithia, the breaking of the Coil, or even the Sundering itself. In chronological order they are:

• Bolas is said to be 20.000 years old, repeating this claim from Future Sight.
• Malfegor had come into being "centuries before under circumstances too horrible for many to contemplate" and "once terrorized all of Alara".
• There are depictions of dragons on old cave art in Naya, but the real deal hasn't been there "for centuries."
• Mayael says the original Anima, who blinded Progenitus, is "centuries dead".
• Bolas has felt his age catching up with him "for decades".
• Rakka Mar is around 50 years old, Kresh about 30. 
• Rakka's age might be relevant, as Bolas claims "He had invested years of time in the strange plural plane and a scheme as old as some of his human minions".
• The Esperite mage Rafiq takes carmot/sangrite from has spend her entire life on The Noble Work. She also says the formula to create etherium is "lost to time". I guess that's all pretty vague, though on first glance it does seem to contradict the Guide, which states Crucius invented etherium "decades" ago, and that he only disappeared "years ago".
• Seekers of Carmot gained an almost religious following over the last decade or two.
• Asha's Prophecy is a prayer spread across Bant by the Skyward Eye "in recent years."
• Sarkhan arrived on Jund two years ago, which matches what was said in the Guide.
• In contrast: it's also been two years since Elspeth found Bant and she hasn't planeswalked since, while the Guide says she found Bant when she was 17 and was knighted at 20... 
• However long she was on Bant, Elspeth doesn't know of the colliding shards, while Ajani witnessed them while planswalking. They clearly must have been getting nearer for much longer for Bolas's plans to make sense, but apparently it has only been visible to non-Elder Draconic geniuses very recently.
• Marisi contacted Chimamatl and Zaliki over a year ago, in preparation for his attack on Jazal.
• Rakka Mar was approached by Bolas 1 year ago.

How I feel sometimes while making these lists.

The event that gets the most mentions is the breaking of the Coil, but I can't really make sense of when it is supposed to have happened:

• "A very old nacatl woman" saw Marisi smash the coil as "a girl".
• Bolas says Marisi set the nacatl up against each other "years ago".
• Marisi is of "Advanced age" according to Bolas, and in his own words: "He was venerable by nacatl standards. He had lived two lifetimes, one impetuous and full of passion, and the other solitary and full of regret. Both lifetimes had been puppeteered by Bolas. The otherworldly lizard had charmed him as a youth, encouraging him to instill chaos within the society of nacatl; and he had threatened him as an adult, forcing him to instill further panic among the elves"
• This just sounds like he's old but kept vital by Bolas's magic, but later we hear "His life had been extended far past its natural prospects"
• And when Marisi leads the Wild Nacatl against the Cloud Nacatl the text speaks of "Two armies, ready to reenact a bloody battle a generation old"

Ultimately this tells us very little. We don't even know how old nacatl tend to get, so what can we make of the woman being "very old", or Marisi's life being "extended far past its natural prospects"? All we really know is that Bolas was involved in Marisi breaking the Coil, and that this must thus have happened some time after the Mending.

Back in the day, when we couldn't just pick up the Visual Guide, people tried to use this information to figure out how far past the Mending we were though, and most people interpreted these references as meaning we were far more than 60 years beyond it. While this is also the first impression I got from the talk of that "very old woman", it is also a little bit of cherry picking, as Bolas feeling his age "for decades" and him meddling in Alaran affairs for as long as some of his human minions have been alive is more suggestive of a date only a few decades after the Mending, which is what things eventually settled upon.

Back in the day creative was against publishing maps, as they thought fans would only use those to point out inconsistencies. Presumably they avoided definite timelines for the same reasons. A bit of a fool's errant if you ask me, as fans found out the inconsistencies between various sources anyway, and now they were not just complaining about those, but also about not getting anything but the vaguest of time references!

Not being able to place the breaking of the Coil or the Sundering of Alara on a timeline might sound like a petty complaint, but the vagueness of the dates leads to more inconsistencies, like how making etherium is apparently a lost ancient art in one source, but was only invented a few decades back in another. This just looks very sloppy, especially when you ask me to buy a Planeswalker's Guide, a publication which I think we should hold to a higher standard than a weekly article series that was probably made on quite the deadline. Luckily clear, unambiguous dates would make their way back into Magic eventually!

For now I guess we ultimately have to square Alara happening less than 60 years after the Mending with what we know about the breaking of the Coil by saying nacatl just don't get that old.