Guildpact

Writer - Cory J. Herndon
Cover Art - Todd Lockwood
First Printing - January 2006

SUMMARY

We begin a few decades befor the last book, with Izzet Magelord Zomaj Hauc exploding some sort of bomb above the plague ridden "Utvara Reclamation Zone" that is supposed to kill all life while leaving the buildings so its Orzhov owners can start redeveloping it. The machine kills all the local Gruul with an implosion, but doesn't explode. Instead it creates a strange fold in space called the Schism that starts sucking up all the ghosts of those who die in Utvara...

Chapter two moves us to 12 years after the Decamillennial. Advokist Teysa Karlov is pulled from her job by her uncle, the owner of Utvara, to help him with that redevelopment, of which she will become baroness once her uncle dies and takes his place on the Ghost Council. We learn that there is now a township for prospectors (who are mining for gold in long-forgotten banks, and seen as squatters by Uncle) in the middle of Utvara. The plague wasn't eradicated by Hauc's experiment though, it instead mutated into a much more deadly, airborne version of itself. Selesnyans have set up a huge tree called Vitar Yescu (still minuscule compared to Vitu Ghazi) which keeps the plague outside of the village, prospectors have to wear protective gear when journeying out, and the Gruul clans that have moved into the outskirts grow antigen fungus on their body, but still live short and brutal lives. 

This is her years later of course, but showing her Guildpact art when it's already on the cover you've just seen would be odd.

Ravnica: City of Guilds Online

For Ravnican block there are once again Mini Sites, but for the first set we just don’t have much to discuss. It just has a quick description of the four Guilds featured, introducing them, their guild leaders, their guildhall, their power structure, etc. It’s cool to have such a succinct summary of all the guilds in a central place, but after many visits to Ravnica all this is all pretty much common knowledge, or covered in the novel review. The only thing that seems to have fallen by the wayside is that according to this information Vitu-Ghazi was "struck down years ago", but kept alive by dryadic magic. These summaries are also printed in the fatpack booklet.

There is also a trailer for the set which has a cool animation style, but does little beyond showing some shots of the world and hinting that there might be some kind of conflict coming.

The real meat of the online Ravnica source lies in the Feature Articles and the weekly Taste the Magic series. 

Ravnica

Writer - Cory J. Herndon

Cover Art - Donato Giancola

First Printing - September 2005

(Well, I think it’s just called Ravnica. The cover and the colofon say that, but there is another title page that uses the “City of Guilds” tagline that they brushed out from the cover, so... who knows?)

SUMMARY

The story opens with Boros officer Agrus Kos and his lieutenant Myczil Zunich investigating a group of Rakdos killers. Kos and Zunich start to chase after their priestess… and we move 57 years further in time, to that last days of the year 9999. Ravnica is gearing up for a celebration of the Decamillenial of the signing of the Guildpact, and Kos is now an old man, drinking too much, divorced several times over and still bitter over whatever happened to Zunich all those years ago. In fact, he thinks he sees the ghost of Zunich at one point. Which should be impossible: ghosts linger on Ravnica, but without something like an Orzhov contract they don't last that long.

The plot really kicks off when this supposed ghost leads Kos into an alley where a Rakdos goblin just killed a little girl that used to live at the orphanage Kos grew up in. Kos chases the goblin to a bar where it blows itself up, killing, among others, Kos's partner Bell Borca (which is odd: Kos left him with the corpse of the little girl) and a prominent Selesnyan, the loxodon Living Saint Bayul. When Kos wakes up in the hospital he learns that Bayul's bodyguard, who is now missing, was Fonn Zunich, his old partner's daughter. Kos promised to take care of the Zunich family, but could never bring himself to face them.

Ravnica & Coldsnap Announcement!

Today I'm reviewing moving house during a lockdown. 

It sucks. Don't do it.

You can't have many people over to help, so you'll end up spending an entire month on it full-time. Especially since the amount of people allowed will get altered by the government several times during that month, requiring you to alter your plans time and again. It sucks extra hard if in the last week of that month, right before everything has to be finished up, there's a code red weather warning due to a snowstorm. Oh, and hardware and furniture stores are either closed or have limited assortiment, so you'll be living in an unfinished house doing all sorts of chores for a long time after you've moved. It'll completely derail all your plans to, say, write some book reviews. Do not recommend!

Luckily, between all that nonsense, I did find time to take a look at all the Ravnica stories, and by now I've finally finished the reviews! So... announcement time!

Ravnica dials back the amount of sources a bit from Kamigawa. No maps, nothing of note in the player's guides, and far fewer online stories (initially none at all, but a few more pop up for the later sets). We do have a few more online articles to look at, thanks to the launch of the Taste the Flavor series at the tail-end of Kamigawa block, and while all three novels are written by Cory Herndon, they are much more stand alone than the previous trilogy was, so each of them warrants their own review, rather than a mere summary followed by a combined review. So starting next Saturday there'll be six weeks of Ravnica content; 3 novel reviews alternated with 3 reviews of the online articles & short stories.

And then, as a little bonus, I'll immediately go on with two more reviews. You see, Coldsnap was released while Magicthegathering.com was still doing its Dissenssion coverage, so to make sure I had everything relating to Ravnica I had to go through all Coldsnap articles as well. I figured I might as well take a look at that set as well, in the form of 1 article covering the online stuff, and 1 covering the short story and lore summary in the player's guide.

I hope you all understand I needed to get that little rant at the beginning of my chest, and you will join me next week for our first look at Magic's most popular plane!