The Darksteel Eye

Writer - Jess Lebow
Cover artist - Carl Critchlow
First printing - December 2003

SUMMARY
We again start with Memnarch, who has clearly gone insane since the last timewe met him. He thinks Karn is speaking to him, is completely addicted to serum, and for some reason he is turning into flesh. He sends his metal minion Malil after Glissa. Throughout the book we get chapters from Memnarch’s point of view in which he is ranting against an imaginary Karn. Through these rants we learn about the history of Mirrodin and most importantly about Memnarch’s plan: since Karn ascended when he and Urza were destroyed in the Legacy blast (back in Apocalypse), Memnarch reckons that if he and Glissa (who has an unflared spark) are destroyed by the creation of Mirrodin’s 5^th sun he will turn into a planeswalker as well… sounds like a foolproof plan to me! Anyway, he has built his fortress Panopticon in the path the final sun will take when it is born, so now all he needs is to make sure Glissa is with him at the right time.

At the start of the story Glissa is actually coming down the blue lacuna, chased by vedalken, after fleeing into there at the end of The Moons of Mirrodin. She and her friends reach the center of Mirrodin, only to be attack by Malil and his levelers. Glissa uses her mysterious destructive power to deal with them, and then they all flee back up the lacuna again. They fight their way through the pursuing vedalken and reach Lumengrid, where they are saved from getting captured again by a few of Bruenna’s Neurok. While resting they discover Bosh is turning into flesh.

Glissa, Bosh and Slobad then go back to the trolls to get answers. They are welcomes by Drooge, their new leader, who says the traitors of the council have been purged. They tell her the sword she stole from Chunt is the Sword ofKaldra. They give her the Shield of Kaldra and tell her to go to the Vault of Whispers to collect the Helm as well, to summon a powerful avatar which will help in the fight against Memnarch. Then Malil and his levelers attack the Tree of Tales. The trolls buy them some time to escape, but while they flee Slobad is kidnapped by a bug that wants to eat him. A giant talking wolf called Al-Hayat shows up to save him and joins the party.

Parallel to Glissa’s story we follow the vedalken Pontifex, who is now on the Synod after a spot was opened due to the death of Janus. The other Synod members, Tyrell and Sodador, don’t like him and force an election to add a fourth member to the Synod, a guy named Orland. Pontifex visits Memnarch, who tells him he needs Glissa for her “piece of divinity” (her planeswalker spark) to turn himself into a ‘walker. Pontifex doesn’t really understand this and offers himself to become part of Memnarch, but he is rebuffed. He interprets this as Glissa being responsible for his god abandoning him, and starts going insane. While this is going on Memnarch also force-feeds some serum to Malil in an attempt to make him see what he is seeing, and fair enough, Malil starts going insane as well. Lots of insane villains in this one… Oh, and Malil also starts turning to flesh.

On the Glimmervoid Glissa and co are attacked by vedaken. Pontifex, despite being told to capture Glissa by Memnarch, now wants to kill her.  The crew is saved by a timely arrival of Bruenna and her Neurok wizards. The crew heads into the Mephidross where they fight nim, levelers, and a giant centipede (no really, we get two random fights with oversized insects in this novel!). They make it to Geth’s throne room, where they are attacked by Pontifex and his vedalken and by Malil and his levelers, but Glissa finds the Helm of Kaldra and Slobad manages to use the three artifacts to summon the giant glowing man that is the Kaldra Guardian, who makes short work of their enemies, though is too late to save Al-Hayat. The remaining heroes then go through the black lacuna to go and kill Memnarch.

Meanwhile the Vedalken Empire gets turned into the democratic Free Republic of Vedalken, though the other three members of the Synod remain in power. They try to imprison Pontifex for “crimes against the people”, but he manages to kill the other two original members of the Synod and escape, and goes entirely off the deep end.

On the inside of the world Glissa’s crew is attacked by threshers, who she can no longer destroy because they have been turned entirely into flesh. The threshers capture her (by swallowing her whole) to return her to Memnarch, but Pontifex shows up and destroys the thresher so he can kill her instead. This is too much for his second in command Marek, who realizes his master is betraying their god, so Glissa is saved when the two Vedalken kill each other.

She reunites with her friends and makes her way to Memnarch, who promptly uses his activated abilities to gain control of the Kaldra Guardian. So much for the new plan to kill Memmy... Bosh sacrifices himself to delay the Guardian so Glissa, Slobad and Bruenna can flee. Bruenna enchants them all with flying capabilities. After shooting through the blue lacuna she heads home, while Glissa and Slobad head to the Tangle because they believe Glissa will have a better chance of defeating Kaldra “on her own ground.” There she is greeted by trolls who send her to the Radix, where the green mana of the Tangle is strongest (unbeknownst to them, this is because it is the spot where the green sun will soon erupt). Then the trolls all sacrifice themselves to delay the Guardian a little longer. Glissa and Slobad fight it for a while, until the green sun bursts through the Radix and obliterates the Guardian.

While Glissa and Slobad lie on the Tangle floor recovering, Memnarch, half-destroyed from the sun going through Panopticon, wakes up Malil and tells him they have a lot to do.

REVIEW

I’m sure you all noticed in the summary that I couldn’t help but remark on the overabundance of bad guys who are just nuts, or the two random fights with giant bugs. You may also have picked up on the fact that there is a whole load of fighting going on, something that had already gotten boring last novel, and that most of this story revolves around gathering all the pieces of Exodia Kaldra, only for that plot thread to be a complete waste of time as Memnarch takes control of the guy immediately? Yeah… This is not going to be a positive review. 

Last time I said a lot of The Moons of Mirrodin's quality would depend on how the rest of the trilogy was going to pay off all the mysteries set up there. Here we get some of the answers, but they aren't very inspired. Memnarch having brought over all the non-blinkmoth life on Mirrodin was pretty much a given, but I had hoped for a more compelling reason than just "he went nuts". His planeswalker-envy is an interesting motivation, but it's a shame his whole plan to ascend boils down to "grab someone with a spark and stand in the way of an explosion", with a rather nonsensical comparison to the ascension of Karn. "He's just insane" is never a very interesting basis for a bad guy, so it's a shame that they picked that as Memnarch's defining trait, and an even bigger shame that they ended up using the same idea for both Malil and Pontifex.

Another big problem is the presentation of all this information. Nothing is made of the big cliffhanger from last time, about Bosh remembering everything. He still occasionally spouts some knowledge about the mysterious landmarks they run into, so his role is pretty much 100% the same as in Moons: being the big bruiser and occasionally setting up some more mystery through his memories. Which is a shame, because him remembering stuff could have been the point where the main characters actually start to puzzle out the history of their world, but no, they are still on a mission just to kill Memnarch.

In addition to Bosh, Al-Hayat could also have been an in to the history of Mirrodin. Bizarrely, after giving no indication that he has any kind of relevant backstory, we learn moments before he dies from his inner monologue that he is so old he remembers seeing the creation of the blue, black and red moons, and that he had hoped he would see that of the green one as well. (I guess he deduced that there must be a green one coming, making him the only person on the plane other than Memnarch who did…)

Yet Glissa doesn’t talk with Bosh or Al-Hajat about the history of the plane. Instead we learn about it from the frequent asides with Memnarch. He tells us that he brought people to Mirrodin “to eliminate loneliness and to have more creatures to experiment on” after he was done experimenting on the blinkmoths. We learn that he used soul traps, “large, diamond-shaped boxes” to do so. We learn of the 5^th sun and his plan to become a planeswalker… all of this just being told to us, rather than any character puzzling it out, thereby ruining the chance of Mirrodin to function as mystery story. The extra annoying thing is that Memnarch is insane, so we learn all these things through his ramblings to the imaginary Karn he keeps seeing, which means that for every single fact we learn we have to wade through an entire chapter of the hallucinations and breakdowns of a serum addict. Anything to pad out the pages I guess…

In addition to those info dumps, this book just doesn’t seem to have anything to say. It adds nothing to the story of the trilogy at large, except for the launch of the 5^th sun/moon in the last chapter. Other than that it is just killing time with the plot cul-de-sac that is Kaldra, the insanity of Memnarch and boring vedalken politics. And when even that proves insufficient to fill the pages, we get endless fighting. Chapters 10 to 20 are almost one continuous streak of battles (in a 25 chapter long book!). The good guys go from facing vedalken and levelers on the Razorgrass Fields to facing nim to a far too long fight against a random giant centipede to facing vedalken and levelers in Geth's throne room. All of this is only broken up by 2 chapters of ranting from Memnarch. And when there isn't any fighting, Jess Lebow fills space with endless inane conversations. Glissa, Slobad and Bosh spend far too long arguing over whether Malil could be Memnarch, which goes nowhere, or trying to explain sunburn even though none of them knows how it actually works. If that sounds like cute banter, it really isn't. It's just really boring.

Diving further into the specifics of the story: the vedalken asides are very annoying. There is a bunch of stuff about the other Synod members forcing a vote by the elected citizen representatives on the inauguration of Orland, and this somehow creating a precedent for democracy, but it is all pretty garbled, especially since it doesn’t seem to line up very well with the last book. Pontifex is suddenly the head of the Synod now, while last time we saw him he was talking about wanting to become a member. How did he get the top job if Tyrell and Sodador hate him? Did anyone vote for him? And if so, why didn’t that create precedent for democracy?

It doesn’t help that all the vedalken are pretty much interchangeable personality-wise. They are all power hungry with a stick up their butt. Why should I care who wins in their power struggle? At one point it is said Orland is an idealist, but he never displays that in any way. I guess he’s supposed to be idealistic about democracy?

This plotline is even less entertaining than the first time I read the book. Back then I thought that it was going somewhere. But Fifth Dawn will almost immediately renders everything with the vedalken moot, and then ends with all of Mirrodin being made completely unusable as a setting. Scars of Mirrodin will ret-con away that ending, but will do little with the vedalken before having the entire plane fall to the Phyrexians. I’ve said before that bad stories can be… well, maybe not improved, but at least made a little more interesting if they add something to the larger continuity. I could go “Well, it’s a bit boring, but at least we are establishing a new status quo for the vedalken here that will become important later on!” Here we discover though that this also works the other way around. Pretty much every subsequent Mirrodin story has added another layer of irrelevance to the vedalken subplot, to the point where it is about as significant to the current story as the later Harper Prism novels. And it least those were entertaining!

Please Dark Legacy, come back and tell me more about the Niroso!

So is there anything good in this book? Well, Slobad is still a very fun character and Bosh now joins him as the other actually interesting person on the team. The two of them are fun to read about and they also seem to bring out the best out of others, like in the scene of them talking about dealing with loss after Glissa is reminded of her mother. Although even they can’t save a seemingly endless discussion about sunburn by three people who don’t know how sunburn works.

So final verdict: boring filler arc. You’re better off just reading the summary.

TRIVIA

• The inside of Mirrodin is a kind of Dyson sphere around the core, with gravity inverted from how it is on the surface. Mycosynth spires grow from the surface (roof?) towards the core, as you can see on Mirrodin’s Core. Memnarch’s headquarters, Panopticon, is a tall blue tower, standing above the mycosynth spires and ending in a rounded bulb. I guess that bulb is shown on Panoptic Mirror? Both Darksteel Citadel and the Panopticon plane card don't show the very top of the structure...

• While you are going into the core via the lacuna, gravity goes sideways.
• Bosh remembers living on the inside of the plane, which could have interesting implications if he is one of the Ur-Golems.
• Pontifex says he has been in the interior “many times before on official visits to Memnarch”, even though he wasn’t a member of the Synod until very recently… well, he does take soldiers along with him, so maybe the higher up scientists also visit Memmy regularly.
• Malil was created “sometime between the last two blue moon cycles and the current convergence” …whenever that is. He says himself he has only had a short life, but everything is relative. He looks identical to how Memnarch originally looked when he was a regular humanoid golem and not a giant four-legged brain-crab-thing.
• Blinkmoths have separation anxiety with removed from their swarms. Poor dears.
• Bosh has a chest cavity in which Glissa and Slobad can fit, and can retract his head and limbs to turn into a ball. So maybe he isn’t an Ur-Golem but an animated Metroid suit.
• There is a Neurok settlement called Medev, and the Neurok have a meditation technique called mulla bunda.
• Clockwork Dragons are a myth according to the elves, but all real to the goblins. They ate some of Slobad’s friends when he was younger!

• The name Drooge means  “Gift Giver”.
• The trolls are very weird. They say they don’t do more to advance the plot save Mirrodin because they are too afraid to do anything, but then all sacrifice themselves to delay Kaldra at the end. Huh? When Glissa says she’s also afraid, Drooge says “What makes us different, you and I, is that despite that fear you go on.”… so then your “we don’t do anything because we are afraid” spiel isn’t much of an explanation now is it?
• Wolves are a myth to the Viridian elves. “Al-Hayat” was the name Glissa’s dad gave to the legendary leader of the wolves. They are almost extinct due to hunters and levelers, with a few remaining spread around the forest. Al-Hayat’s partner was killed in an unexplained event, and he joins Glissa because he feels it is better to try and do something than just wait for the end. Oh, and he can do magic.
• Pontifex has some “old-looking contraptions”: books! His second in command Marek is amazed by them. This is a little detail that I actually really like. It makes Mirrodin feel very futuristic and alien.
• The vedalken fly using "hover guard gliders", which are described as a pack of wings you strap to your back. Sounds like they meant something like Neurok Hoversails, rather than the hoverguards we see in the set.

• The Darksteel Eye is installed in this novel. It allows Memnarch to observe the entire plane.

“On the outside, the Eye looked like two three-sided pyramids fused together to form a dark, towering elongated diamond … once inside, the door closed, and each of the six surfaces lit up with a magical spell, allowing Memnarch to see into even the remote corners of Mirrodin – all at once”

• It has six surfaces because Memmy has 6 eyes. 1 screen is permanently linked to Malil’s vision, 4 other to eyes of various myr. The final one is focused on Lumengrid.
• Darksteel is described as such:

 “it had to be created and forged in the very same moment. Once the metal solidified and the magical spell that fused the molecules together subsided, Darksteel was harder than anything in existence.”

• Despite it being the name of the book, the Darksteel Eye isn't very important. It also didn't make it into the game, although the Fifth Dawn card Eyes of the Watcher shows something quite like it.
• Also, despite gracing the cover, Darksteel Colossus never shows up in the story. Heck, darksteel itself plays no role in the plot other than being the material the Eye is made of.

• In addition to making up stupid plans and seeing hallucinatory Karns, Memnarch’s insanity causes him to think humanoids have no capacity for emotion.

“Oh, they fooled Memnarch for a time. The systems and rituals they have created seem sophisticated, very sophisticated indeed. But upon further study these things-these complex systems that Memnarch has watched, has hoped would show an understanding, a level of higher intelligence and emotion-have proved just the opposite.”

• Memnarch at one point starts philosophizing. If he was created by Karn, and Karn was created by Urza… who created Urza? And is it creators all the way down, or is there an uncreated creator at the start? But then who created the uncreated creator? He doesn't figure it out.
• The first sign of a new moon being launched is the blinkmoths disappearing somewhere. Even Memnarch doesn’t know where. “They simply left Mirrodin”.
• Pontifex’s second in command Marek was in charge of punishing Bruenna’s people when they did not work hard enough. This information is shared with us when the two are fighting to add to the stakes I guess, but Marek makes it out of that battle alive and it is never brought up again.
• The Kaldra Guardian is described as such:

“It’s head, arms and hands were formed from a glowing, pale blue-white plasma … its arms were strong and inscribed with hundreds of tattoos. Some formed rudimentary pictures of animals and monsters. Others appeared to be simple runes-letters of words in an alphabet Glissa did not understand. Under the great helm its face looked human-only much, much larger, and blue. It has a strong, angular chin that jutted out past the rest of its face, and its eyes were empty white orbs”

Missing a few details in the token art, but the color matches!

• When he is being threatened about the location of the black lacuna, Geth says “just put me down and leave me my head. I’m fond of my head.” Heh. I’m sure that specific sentence inspired Cory Herndon when writing Fifth Dawn! More on that next time.
• Geth says “Yert is no longer with us”, being eaten by his new reaper. (=harvester). We’ll get more details about that next book as well.
• Memnarch calls Glissa “Glissa Sunseeker” once. Not that Glissa has any idea about the suns or their significance, since she never talked to Bosh or Al-Hayat about them...

CONTINUITY

• There are a bunch of inconsistencies between the previous book and this one. For example, Here the Convergence involves all the moons lining up, which has never happened in Glissa’s lifetime. Last time the convergence meant all the moons/suns being located above the corresponding regions (so the black sun above the Mephidross, etc.)
• In Moons of Mirrodin The Pool of Knowledge looked like the Quicksilver Sea, only it is see-through rather than opaque. You need to have consumer serum before diving in it for it to enlighten you, otherwise it just gives you a few random images. In the Darksteel Eye however, the whole thing is made of serum. It is also much deeper, though that at least gets handwaved with a “The pool hadn’t seemed so deep on the way down.”
• Glissa gets flares of a giant metal creature attacking her on the non-metal plane. This does not match with how the elves were brought to Mirrodin, but that could be explained by what we learn of the flares in the next book.
• Let’s be charitable and interpret the beetle and the giant centipede trying to eat Slobad as a reference to Squee and his bug eating. When the centipede is coming for him he even thinks it is a fitting way for a goblin to die.

• Bosh at one point thinks “Once the creator had left-was compelled to leave really-everything went to the nine hells”, and Pontifex later also yells about the nine hells. I guess Karn told Memnarch about Phyrexia, and he then told the golems and the Phyrexians? Or did a planeswalker pass by Mirrodin somewhere along the line?
• Oh, and check out this quote:

“This plane, like so many others around the multiverse, was a creation of a planeswalker. But for all their magic and wisdom, the most powerful beings in all of Dominia had never been able to create stable worlds”

• See that! Dominia! This could very well be the last time the Multiverse gets called that! And we even get a depiction of artificial planes which matches with what we learned about them in Planeswalker!

“His creator, his god Karn, had the power to forge whole worlds from nothing more than a thought. Unless he stayed on his world, though, maintaining it through his own force of will, it would collapse, imploding like an overripe star”

• Memnarch says he has seen other planes when Karn took him too them. So apparently Karn returned at some point after the MoM prologue to take Memnarch on a journey? Or did Memmy hallucinate those trips as well?
• Here's what Karn told Memnarch of his own ascension:

“In the story, Master Karn spoke of an invasion of his home world by a sickness. He called it the Phyrexian Plague. Memnarch knew nothing more about it, but he imagined it was much like the mycosynth and resulting Spore here on Mirrodin”.

• How ironic, considering the eventual revelation about what the oil/mycosynth/spore actually is.

TIMELINE

As I did with The Moons of Mirrodin, I will put this story around 100 years after Scourge, and save the discussion on all the inconsistencies in its placement for a separate article. There is one reference in this book that is sort of important for that discussion: Glissa is mesmerized by the wooden box in which the trolls keep the Shield of Kaldra, as she has never seen wood on her metal plane. Drooge then says “It is from the wood of a tree not from this world. Many thousands of years ago, it is said that my people, the trolls, lived in these trees.”

This suggests that we are millennia into the future from the rest of Magic’s canon. This will eventually be disproven though.

Oh, and yes, he actually talks about years, rather than cycles. This book is inconsistent about that.