Time Spiral

 

Writer - Scott McGough

Cover Artist - Scott M. Fisher

First Published - September 2006

SUMMARY

Teferi and Jhoira are living in a bubble outside of the timestream since Invasion. Shiv begins returning, but it wont fit (metaphysically, somehow) in the gap where it used to be, and the resulting crash could destroy Dominaria and with it the entire Multiverse. So the two of them return to the regular world to smooth out the landing. To figure out how to do that, they go to visit Freyalise in Skyshroud, as Teferi is very impressed by her putting that forest in Keld during the Rathi overlay and wants to learn how she did it to apply that knowledge to Shiv. They take along two viashino and two Ghitu as a retinue. Unfortunately there are time rifts everywhere, through which Dominaria's mana is being drained, and time is already so out of wonk that they appear on Dominaria 300 years after they left, even though our Master of Time thought it was only 100.

At Skyshroud the group discovers Radha, who can somehow tap into the mana of the rifts, and seems to Teferi to have something similar to his spark. He convinces Freyalise that Radha should come with him, as studying her link to the Skyshroud rift might give him the insight he needs to fix Dominaria. Radha herself would rather stay to kill the time displaced Gathans who now rule Keld, but after some failed battles and some less than friendly banter with Teferi (as in, she jabs a spike through his head at one point) she is finally convinced to come along in the hope that Teferi will give her the power to succeed against the Gathans afterwards.

The next stop on their tour is Urborg, where another rift was created by the overlay of the Stronghold. There they run into Venser, who has a similar link to his local rift as Radha has to her's. He's build a teleporter that interacts with the rifts somehow. When he tries to give a demonstration at Teferi's urging, the thing suddenly wont power down, and the rift spits out a huge shadow dragon. In all the chaos Teferi planeswalks them all into the rift itself to figure out how it works, and they get snapshots of all the disasters that created the various rifts through the ages. Eventually they are spat out again, ending up at Madara, where a disembodied voice calling itself "Sensei Ryu" starts talking to them. Those of you who know 1 or 2 words Japanese and are familiar with what happened last time we saw Madara can probably tell where this is going.

After some threatening words "Sensei Ryu" entrances Venser and uses his link to the rifts to bring himself back to life, so now the group is faced with Nicol Bolas. Teferi tries to duel him, but ends up chopped into little pieces (He gets better. He's a planeswalker). He does manage to convince the dragon that the world might be ending though, so Bolas decides to leave to get some vengeance on everyone related to Tetsuo Umezawa before it's too late. Chastened by his defeat Teferi decides to guide the returning Shiv alone, though Jhoira, Venser and one of their viashino companions insist on coming with him.

Radha and the other surviving members of the retinue (one of the Ghitu got literally melted by Bolas) return to Skyshroud. After a tense meeting with Freyalise Radha gets a small group of elvish rangers to follow her to finally take on the Gathan warlord Greht. After quite the epic battle ends with him exploding (again: literally) she is touched by the spirit of Keld and makes a covenant with it, becoming a true Keldon warlord.

Finally, Teferi manages to close the Shivan rift, allowing the phased out part of Shiv to return. It costs him his planeswalker's spark though, as he discovers when a group of berserk Shivans attacks in the cliffhanger.

REVIEW

And so we finally come to Time Spiral block.

Where the last three blocks have been very insular, here we're suddenly plunging deep into continuity and tying stories as disparate as the Ice Age cycle, the Legends II cycle and the Otaria Saga together in one big arc. And while those previous blocks were either ignored by subsequent continuity for years or had to have their endings changed to fit with later stories, Time Spiral block sets the groundwork for pretty much the entire setting from this point on. It's hard to think of a more important story in the canon.

Unfortunately, it's also hard to think of a more hated story. 

Most of that hate comes from the way the trilogy handles longstanding characters, and from how it completely rewrites the rules for planeswalkers. But that won't happen until Planar Chaos and Future Sight. Time Spiral itself does give us a completely blown-up version of Dominaria, but since it does so in a way that builds upon previous stories I don't remember all that much vitriol about it (not more so than usual with any new Magic set at least). Dominaria has been reinvented many times over the years (compare the pre-Ice Age, Ice Age and post-Ice Age settings for example) and in fact I always thought it was weird that the Phyrexian Invasion seemed to have no lasting impact on the plane at all.

So let's table the discussion of the Mending and the fate of the old school planeswalkers for now and let's see what this book has to offer on its own.

Which, unfortunately, isn't all that much either...

I mean, it's great to see all these characters again, and obviously I'm tremendously enjoying all the continuity references, but there is very little story here. Teferi and Jhoira go to Skyshroud to figure out how to return Shiv, only to get derailed into the Keld plot for literally half the book! That subplot only adds to the overall story by allowing Radha to tag along, who is linked to the Rifts in some strange way only planeswalkers can perceive but not explain. After that the crew goes to Urborg to poke a Rift and pick up Venser, then end up in Madara to awaken Bolas, who immediately runs away... Then we're back to the Keld plot for a few chapters and only in the last pages do we see any progress on the Shiv front. 

I'm sure Teferi is learning all sorts of interesting stuff about magical metaphysics throughout all this, but from my mortal point of view (and I'm assuming most of the readers will be mere mortals) it looks like a bunch of aimless running around. The big tension at the climax resolves around Shiv coming back, but for us that is very abstract gobbledegook, which Teferi can most eloquently describe to us as a metaphore of a broken bowl with too many pieces. Too abstract to be really threatening. Jhoira and Venser altering his metaphore and Teferi being annoyed by that makes the whole scene more funny than scary.

This story really suffers from not having a bad guy. I'm guessing the idea was to do a disaster movie type story, where the danger comes from the environment rather than a person, but in those kinds of stories there is usually a clear degradation of the circumstances, or some sort of stand-in bad guy (the politician/capitalist who doesn't listen to the warnings, you know the type) to add more tension. Here the world is in a very bad shape, but it doesn't appear to be getting any worse, which robs the plot of any urgency. 

And on the bad guy front, there is Greht, and Nicol Bolas for a few chapters, but neither has anything to do with the overall story. To devote so much time to this one warlord in Keld makes this more of a Radha story than the promised Dominaria-wide disaster story at times. 

I guess there is some interest in showing us the state of Dominaria first, rather than devoting all your time to fixing the problems, but it does result in two distinct stories interrupting one another's flow. Perhaps it would've been better if the book was told from Radha's perspective, fighting Greht and occasionally running into a cryptic Teferi or Jhoira, who then collected her for their own quest near the end.

Other than that, there are also some odd quirks to the writing which I haven't noticed in previous Scott McGough books. It can be very descriptive at times. Jhoira's Toolbox (the use of which I do like) picking up an item is described in great detail, as is the specific visual effect of Teferi returning everyone to the timestream, Teferi's musing on the Blind Eternities, Radha's overview of the Skyshroud ecology... I wouldn't say it's pure padding, as the visual effect clues in Teferi that something is wrong with time, his musings showcase the power of old school planeswalkers, which later gets contrasted with the new breed of 'walkers in Radha and Venser, and the saprolings and slivers of Skyshroud will become important-ish next novel. But it does mean that a lot of this book is taken up by characters standing around thinking about stuff, and not moving the plot forward very much.

The one thing the book does do pretty well is portraying the characters. Teferi trying and failing to impress Radha is very funny, as is Venser being utterly terrified of her, and the nekoru that show up on Madara are as fun as their ancestors were.

Finally, more an observation that a comment: this book does more to hammer home the fact that the planeswalkers we are about to say goodbye to are immensely powerful, beyond regular mortals in their perception of reality and really only exist as minds giving themselves form, than most previous stories. 

"He was functionally omnipotent, a being of incalculable power, with the ability to go almost anywhere, do almost anything, and appear however they liked". 

"pondering reality often made his [Teferi's] eyes glaze over and sometimes his mind would drift for weeks"

"Planeswalkers were beings of mind and mystical power, but if they grew too fixed or comfortably in the body they chose, they could fall victim to that body's inherent weaknesses. He had been in his familiar human guise so long that his consciousness had naturally settled in his head. When Radha spiked his brain, the wound was temporarily as debilitating as if Teferi had been mortal."

In the initial years of the storyline planeswalkers were depicted very inconsistently, and then around the time of the book Planeswalker, when their powers were codified, they were mostly sidelined; depicted through the eyes of mortal like Barrin or Jodah through most of the Weatherlight Saga, and only appearing in prologues and epilogues in the Otaria Saga and the first few Planeshopping Era blocks. At least they now get to go out on a high?

TRIVIA

• Jhoira calls Teferi "Teferi Planeswalker" when she's angry with him, which he doesn't like at all, because it's styled after "Urza Planeswalker".
• The retinue that comes along with Jhoira and Teferi exists of the viashino Skive & Corus, and the Ghitu warriors Dassene & Aprem. Aprem is the one who gets melted into a puddle.
• Corus is a Viashino Sandswimmer, and Skive appears to be a Viashino Fangtail. Which I know doesn't come from Dominaria, but when he's constantly killing enemies with his sharp tail... The only thing we really learn about them is that Skive was part of a Keldon warhost at some point in the past.
• The Skyshroud rangers are led by an elf called Llanach.
• At one point we get the quote "I understand the Ghitu word for you match-strikers translates directly as 'disposable'", which is a reference to the flavor text of Ghitu Fire-Eater.
• When Teferi looks at the Skyshroud Rift, we get this description:

"He looked back up and imagined he could follow the great rift all the way back to Skyshroud's second home, though the Blind Eternities to the far edge of the multiverse, then all the way back to its original location on the other side of Dominaria"

• One of my friends is a cartographer who made me a little Dominaria globe. Which I checked, and it seems Caliman is about the other side of the world from Keld. So... was Skyshroud originally an extension of Norwood? (Not really, we know Skyshroud actually floated on Dominaria's oceans before being transported to Rath)

• Colos meat apparently tastes gamey, but is good for sausage. According to the viashino at least.
• Skyshroud is now overgrown with saprolings, "revolting, predatory plant-fungus", and full of slivers. These two two infestations are the only things keeping each other in check.
• Greth has a metal mask grafted onto his face and glowing red eyes. Well, I guess you need a Mad Max villain for your post-Apocalyptic setting, and using a mutated Keldon for that role is a no brainer.
• Teferi's grandfather was called Mabutho, and was the first in his family to own his own land. 
• Through the Urborg rift can be seen a mechanical Urborg in which "every tree, every hill, every valley, and every bog was coated with wire, rivets, and tiny clockwork motors.", and where the Stronghold was spewing "silver-white flame". That last bit would become true again eventually.

• Similarly, through the Shivan rift they see "an endless field of smokestacks belching fire. The vast desert wastelands had become one gigantic mana refinery". Later Teferi wonders if this is what Shiv could've been if he hadn't phased it out (since the Shiv seen in the rift is whole), or a vision from the far future showing a land that had lost its natural beauty.
• The crew enters Urborg in a place littered with Phyrexian skeletons. We're told "The Phyrexians were regenerative and cannibalistic-if a single living piece found its way to this fetid graveyard, it could conceivably absorb all of the wreckage and reconstitute itself as a gigantic amalgamation of random parts". Foreshadowing for Dominaria United?
• When we first meet Venser he's trying to build a teleportation device and powering his attempt with scavenged Phyrexian powerstones. Lord Windgrace is sending his gladehunters after him, from a general "we hate artifacts" point of view. The gladehunters include people, bugs and slivers. We'll see more of them, and their lord, next book.
• According to Jhoira finishing Venser's teleporter (which he calls by the Phyrexian word "ambulator") "would be the crowning achievement that made a journeyman artificer into a master". I'll randomly note that we've just come from Ravnica where the Izzet apparently installed the things for easy use by the Orzhov.

• The shadow dragon that appears in Urborg is "not from this plane-not from any natural plane Teferi had visited or researched. It simultaneously existed here in Urborg, yet it didn't exist at all. It didn't flicker in and out of reality but was permanently trapped between the states of real and unreal".  We never get an explanation for it either. Is it from an alternate timeline? A shadow being trapped between planes like the Soltari? Something to do with Nicol Bolas?
• "Live On [name]. Be well and happy" is a traditional Zhalfirin farewell.
• Teferi apperently once traveled inside a whale, and by strapping beebles to his feet.
• Teferi hasn't had a planeswalkers duel in over four hundred years. "The last had been against a raving mad, self-styled shark goddess in the deepst part of a maritime plane's planet-spanning ocean. He had only wanted a sample of their mana-infused coral, but she was not inclined to give it up." It had lasted all of two minutes, with Teferi trapping his enemy in a whirlpool and then phasing her out.
• Bolas's "discard your hand if you take damage" ability is represented as his touch causing seizures.
• On Shiv the crew runs into a group of viashino, goblins and a handful of orcs. Later a bunch of slivers turn up as well. Jhoira mentions Shiv never had orcs before, and Corus says the viashino and goblins are "different" somehow. Presumably it's the lack of noses that throws him.

• Teferi talks about Radha and Venser being linked to the rifts, and that they might be able to travel through them like Nicol Bolas did. Radha pledging herself to Keld negates this somehow however.

CONTINUITY

Time Spiral is of course full of references to older stories, so let's first do a round of "where did we see these people before", and then go into specifics.

• Jhoira was introduced in Time Streams and last seen in Invasion, phasing out alongside Shiv.
• Teferi... eh... well, he was first mentioned in the various articles covering the Mirage story, made his first actual appearance in, of all places, the Battlemage videogame, made his first chronological appearance on the Urza's Saga card Disruptive Student, and then finally made his first appearance in an actual story in Time Streams alongside Jhoira. We thought he was last seen in Scourge, but his appearance there is chucked out of continuity by this novel (more on that below), so this Teferi was last seen in Invasion as well, phasing out Shiv and Zhalfir. 
• Freyalise was first seen in the Ice Age comics and last in Apocalypse. When Rath overlaid on Dominaria during Planeshift she made sure Skyshroud appeared in Keld. We're told here that she did so because she recognized the Skyshroud elves as descendants of her worshipers and thus wanted to protect them.
• Nicol Bolas is much more recent than you might imagine. Though introduced in the Legends set, he never appeared in the storyline until Assassin's Blade, and even then the true identity of "the emperor" was a mystery until the last page of Emperor's Fist. That said, there was the mention of a brother of Chromium Rhuell dying in Ice Age #2 which I suspect was intended as a reference to Bolas. His later appearances mean that by proces of elimination the dead Elder has to be Arcades Sabboth, but considering the dragon in question was summoned by Leshrac it's more likely that it was originally intended to be the Grixis-colored brother instead.

• Jhoira claims to have seen the creation and destruction of worlds, planet-wide warfare and the sundering of time. The destruction probably refers to Serra's Realm, the sundering of time the explosion of the time machine on Tolaria (both from Time Streams) and the global war would be the Phyrexian invasion. No idea what world she saw created would be. Maybe she peeked in on Karn creating Argentum/Mirrodin from her time bubble?
• Teferi was a court mage during "what Zhalfirin history still called the Golden Age". That term is new, but I guess it covers the period from when Teferi arrived to stop a civil war, to the point where he went traveling the planes and the country promptly fell into civil war again. More on Zhalfirin history here.
• We are also told this about the end of his time as the court mage: "

"History did not record that Teferi's tenure as a court mage ended unhappily. He did not like to discuss the circumstances that led to his falling-out with the king and the end of his career as a court mage. Instead, Teferi would brush the matter aside with a laugh, content to repeat the version he had planted in Zhalfir's libraries and history texts: that the king's miracle-worker grew tired of public life and quietly retreated to his own private island to live out his declining years."

• Previously we had just heard that he left because he got that planeswalkerial desire to travel the Multiverse, and that he didn't retreat to his island until after returning to install Queen Yormeba on the throne. Perhaps he fell out with the king, claimed his island, then went traveling?
• Oh, and here is even more new info on Zhalfirin history!

"She [Jhoira] would never blame Teferi for the disasters that plagued Zhalfir after he retired, but the peace and prosperity he so carefully crafted was quickly destroyed by a war fought primarily to claim his secrets."

• This is a bit difficult to place. The collapse of Zhalfir after Teferi left came from Femeref seceding over religious issues, and then Suq'Ata occupying northern Zhalfir because of its gold mines. Perhaps in the following further disintegration of the country people fought to gain control over Teferi's stuff?
• Jhoira is fairly certain Teferi stopped wearing his courtly mage outfit until "recently". Since Teferi is described as wearing the same stuff as in his Invasion card arts, "recently" must be relative.

• Freyalise has some harsh words about the Nine Titans, the group of nine planeswalkers Urza assembled to fight the Invasion.

"The nine of us hardly lasted a day before we began betraying and murdering each other. Urza himself accounted for at least two of the deaths, sacrificing us as pawns. Of the original number, I mark only two who carried out our mission and returned alive and intact"

• Tevesh Szat was the one who betrayed the group to Phyrexia and killed Kristina and Daria, Urza then killed Szat to power the spirit bombs, only for him to go over to Phyrexia himself, killing Taysir when he tried to stop him. Quick note about the phrase "original number": originally Daria and Kristina weren't even supposed to take part. Daria was brought along by Taysir when Teferi skipped out on the plan, and Freyalise herself brought in Kristina in an attempt to get Urza to kick out Szat, only for him to kick out the never-actually-seen Parcher instead. Perhaps there's some lingering guilt in her for getting Kristina involved and that's why she's so unwilling to help Teferi.
• Freyalise is depicted quite badly here. It's said it's her edict "that humans were inferior to elves, inferior even to trees". We haven't seen her be that racist before, especially since she's only half-elven herself. Then again, Teferi might just have the wrong info, as he also says: 

"With all his resources, not even he could say where she originally came from, how she became a planeswalker, or how long she had been one. If Freyalise had spoken truly and Teferi had been gone for three centuries, then she herself had been actively traveling the multiverse for at least four thousand years"

• And, about her ascension:

"all evidence pointed to an elf maiden from the Llanowar forest during the early days of elves on Dominaria. She was a worshipper of nature before she herself was worshipped"

• That "four thousand year" bit is completely ridiculous, as we saw her as a mortal during the Ice Age, only a little over two thousand years ago. She lived in Storgard as a child, which is on Terisiare, so I highly doubt she made her way there from Llanowar, on Aerona. Maybe Scott McGough was trying to fill some continuity holes, as he also gives an explanation for Teferi's (up to this point unexplained) ascension later on, and didn't know about the Ice Age comics in which Freyalise's backstory was given. You could take this as a ret-con, but it has since been ignored, and her current entry on Magicthegathering.com makes mention of her Storgard origin, so let's just say Teferi's resources are wrong.

• Freyalise herself is better informed, as she says "True Keldons wiped out the Gathans even before you starting playing the fool in Zhalfir" ... "It took Keld half a millennium to cull the Tolarian interference from their bloodlines". Which is true if we assume "playing the fool" means Teferi phasing out Zhalfir. Gathans, which were created by Tolarian gene manipulation techniques, were dominant in Keld until ~3863, when Phyrexia went to war against them. We saw this in Bloodlines.
• There are plenty of references to Keldon history here, including the gathering of warlords in Bloodlines, the Necropolis introduced in Prophecy and the Golden Argosy from Planeshift. There are now people living in the Necropolis, hiding from the Gathans (Greht killed or press-ganged all the warriors.)
• Radha is a descendant of Astor ("Doyen. Upstart. Bearer of Three Blades. Steward of the Northern Wastes. The Butcher of Bogardan", according to his epitaph), who we previously saw in Myths of Magic, Dragons of Magic, and Planeshift. He's not interred in the Necropolis though. Radha's grandmother says that's because he never died. Teferi says that it's because Astor sailed the Golden Argosy to Urborg. It seems Teferi was also the one updating the MTG Wiki, which dutifully describes Astor arriving there, meeting Grizzlegom, fighting Phyrexians... but here's the thing: NONE OF THAT HAPPENED! In Planeshift, before the Golden Argosy sets sail, Astor (and the other named Keldons) jump overboard to keep fighting in Keld! Clearly someone had Time Spiral handy, but not Planeshift when writing that entry!

• Radha's mother was supposedly sired in the short time between Skyshroud's appearance in Keld and the sailing of the Golden Argosy, which is a very short window of time. When Teferi tells Jhoira of Radha's ancestry she asks if it's true, and Teferi admits he has no idea. So there is a possibility it's all just a story.
• Teferi calls Eladamri the messiah of Skyshroud. Radha corrects him: Eladamri was Korvecdal, "only savior in the sense of being a vigorous protector". The term Korvecdal was introduced in Tempest block as the one prophesied to unite the Kor, Vec and Dal tribes. Eladamri was hailed Korvecdal in Nemesis, after the previous supposed Korvecdal, Gerrard, had left Rath.
• Teferi refers to Karona's appearance as "a second world-wide magical war", though in Legions & Scourge we only saw conflict in Otaria. Then again, in Scourge Kamahl also called the Cabal/Krosa/Topos scuffle at the end of Onslaught a world war as well... You'd think people would be a little more restrained with that term in the wake of the invasion, but I guess they are just prone to hyperbole.
• Speaking of Karona, here's a very important bit of dialogue on her: 

"Did it [the rift] always draw mana to it? 

The goddess [Freyalise] glared. "Not always." She clenched her jaw. "Not until Karona came."

"I see. When was that?" 

"A century after you left, maybe more. Time has always been hard to quantify when you Tolarians are involved." 

Teferi shrugged. "Perhaps. Who is Karona?" 

She gaped at him in naked contempt. "How can you pretend not to know?" 

"Because I don't." 

"She spoke to you. Her followers in Otaria never stopped telling the story of Karona summoning to her the world's mightiest magical beings then dismissing them as if she were interviewing footmen. You were reputedly among the dismissed." 

"I've never heard of her, never met her, and never spoken to her. If she says she met me, it was in a dream she had."

• Important point 1: Karona caused the mana desiccation of Dominaria.
• Important point 2: Parts of Scourge have just been ret-conned! That's a big deal, as WotC almost never acknowledges ret-cons in story. Either you get a novel like Jedit that chucks out an old comic (Jedit Ojanen in this case), or the inconsistencies pile up until a book like Test of Metal quietly drops form canon. Explaining in-story that some older story has been changed, though common practice in superhero comics, is pretty unprecedented for Magic. Annoyingly we never get more details than Teferi going "Nope, never happened." According to a Phyrexia.com forum thread Brady Dommermuth gave a few suggestions at one point:

"...remember that Karona *is* magic. Her 'visitations' didn't necessarily represent any reality or timeframe. She could have been moving through time, creating alternate realities, manifesting the unconscious fears and desires of her "subjects" . . . ."

• Feel free to pick the option you prefer. I like to think she was actually looking into alternative timelines, making the end of Scourge the beginning of all the Time Spiral temporal shenanigans.

Hey look, it's Teferi and Jhoira! Making this illustration slightly less random than the rest!

• Teferi keeps calling Borgardan "Bogarden" (he does come across very uninformed if I keep listing all the mistakes, but this is most likely an editing mistake), and says "There is something of a fetish for Borgad[e/a]n spells and artifacts among Keldons, or at least, there were in my time". This "fetish" was seen in Astor's previous appearances, as well as with the Keldons taking in Kolo Meha, which was mentioned in Emperor's Fist. Radha's tattoos are also of Borgad[e/a]n design.
• Teferi can recount the history of Urborg during the Phyrexian Invasion, including the stuff that happened in Apocalypse. He left the timestream in Invasion, suggesting he did do some checking out of the world inside the time stream at some point.
• Venser lived his whole life in Urborg, and lives completely alone. In Scars block he'll mention friends and teachers, but I guess those have all left or died at this point.
• Corus curses "Fiers' Teeth" at one point. Previously all references to the god/planeswalker Fiers we've had have come from dwarves and Otarian barbarians. Either there have been some missionaries to Shiv, or Corus visited Otaria at some point. The two places are relatively close to each other after all.
• The scenes spotted during the groups jaunt in the Urborg rift are the Sylex Blast from The Brother's War, an image of Karona being worshiped, presumably from Scourge (though I don't recognize the specific scene), Tetsuo's meteor hammer from Champion's Trial, Barrin's Obliteration spell from Invasion and the explosion of Urza's time machine from Time Streams.
• Madara has been overrun with nekoru, who are attended by a cult who make themselves look catlike with filed canines and facial tattoos.

Any excuse to post this sweetie!

• For years it was a mystery how Teferi ascended, but here we finally hear that it was the explosion at Tolaria that did it, but that it took another 20 years after being freed from the time bubble for him to realize what had happened. Only when he reconnected to Zhalfir's mana did he notice the difference. Most other planeswalkers immediately start showing off their nigh-omnipotence, but I guess the slow time bubble interfered with his senses somehow.
• He also mentioned having nightmares about burning alive for three decades afterwards. This may have been referenced in the Return to Dominaria story, where the threat of being imprisoned brings back flashbacks to the time bubble for him.
• In addition to his own ascension, Teferi also muses on that of Freyalise (which he gets wrong, as mentioned above), Urza (shown in The Brother's War), Karn (Apocalypse), Lord Windgrace ("unknown and unverifiable") and Bo Levar (in the short story "Journey to the End of the World" in The Colors of Magic anthology). 
• In this collection of references Teferi also mentions Levar's dying to save the Eliterates in Apocalypse. Later he says he's always been inspired by Bo Levar in general, and wonders if he should've sacrificed himself to protect Zhalfir and Shiv like Levar did with the Eliterates, rather than phasing them out and causing the current problems.
• One more entry for the "Teferi is wrong about everything" file: his musings on Karn's nature:

"Karn, an artificial being without a true planeswalker spark, absorbed planeswalking machinery into his body and became indistinguishable from a flesh and blood planeswalker"

• Even setting aside the weird phrasing of "flesh and blood planeswalker" when elsewhere in the same book it's made clear an old-school 'walker only has as much flesh and blood as they put in whatever body they form for themselves, Karn is much more than just a golem with a planeswalking engine in his chest. He's absorbed both Urza's, and probably Glacian's, sparks, and Planeshift heavily hinted he was somehow ascending even before that! We'll talk more about this later in of Time Spiral block coverage.
• Teferi has mastered oratorial skills as an apprentice of Hakim Loreweaver "the greatest storyteller in the history of Zhalfir". Hakim was actually from Suq'Ata, but famous throughout Jamuraa, so we'll let that one slide. Note that Hakim was alive during the Mirage Wars, and that Teferi was phased out for 200 years before that. So unless Hakim is very long lived (for which we have no evidence, but you never know with these magic types) Teferi must've spend some time with him in the years between the Mirage Wars and the Invasion.

• While temporarally separated from the group by Nicol Bolas, Teferi uses Karn's mantra "Jhoira is my friend", from Bloodlines, in order to reconnect with her. He says Karn told him about that, though we've never seen the two of them together since Karn came up with it. It's entirely possible that Teferi visited Karn during his stay in Benalia (in Bloodlines) or even during his stay with Sidar Kondo (in various Tempest era flashbacks). At that point Karn would most likely have forgotten who Teferi was due to his capped memory though, so I'm now imagining a very awkward and painful reunion...
• Bolas, always with the hurt ego, says he was "destroyed in mind, body, and spirit by an organized campaign of betrayal. Now I am little more than a memory of a ghost". Nah man, it was just one guy with a hammer.
• Bolas refuses to say what created the Madaran rift. We'll have to wait till Future Sight for someone a bit more forthcoming with that information to enter our story. Bolas does have something else to say that is veeeeeeery interesting though:

"The schism became a source of misery before Karon's War by a millennium or more. When poor, mad little Ravi rang her terrible bell and the Garden ceased to exist, the echoes of that destructive chime reached far and wide, all the way to the Talon Gates and the rift they attend. The tolling of Ravi's chime opened the rift wider and deeper, extending it all the way across the cosmos to another realm. When it reaches this new place, a place where flesh and spirit existed in perfect balance, the rift disrupted that balance. It also created a link between this world and that one, a path for any suitably powerful and opportunistic spirit to tread. Soon such a spirit found that path and used to to come to Madara, and once here she cursed it with the plague Umezawa"

• Yup! All the previous continuity gripes in this review are forgiven mister McGough, you remembered Ravi from the Homelands comic, and tied Ulgrotha into the events of Kamigawa block! You even remembered that "Ulgrotha" means "Garden"! (Note that Ulgrotha didn't cease to exist with the ringing of the Apocalypse Chime, but many of its mana lines were destroyed).
• The "by a millennium or more" line caused some timeline revision in regards to the Homelands story, but that set's place on the timeline had always been very murky. It wasn't until Dominaria Podcasts and Artbook that it's placement was finalized, and for the related Kamigawa placement I even had to use the War of the Spark Artbook, released in October 2020!
• And hey, at least it's some kind of temporal reference! When Teferi sees the vision of Tetsuo's hammer while in the Urborg rift we get this quote: "Teferi tried in vain to place this scene geographically or chronologically, but it was maddeningly indistinct. All he could tell was that they were somewhere on Dominaria at some point in the past" Thank you for that illuminating comment mr. Hero of Dominaria!

Yup. This thing is tangentially related to the backstory of Neon Dynasty!

• Bolas says the energy of his death destroyed the Meditation Realm. Clearly it didn't, since it becomes an important part the Bolas arc in upcoming years. All of this heavily suggests that Tetsuo's Meditation Realm (which Bolas himself knew nothing about back in Champion's Trial) is a different place than Bolas's Meditation Realm. Obviously that wasn't the intention at the time, but since we've now also seen Bolas using his millennia ago in the Chronicle of Bolas story, I don't think we've got another way out to explain how Tetsuo was able to kill him at this point.
• As Bolas leaves he says he'll go and beat-up the Myojin of Night's Reach for saddling Madara with the Umezawa's, and then to go and char to ashes every Umezawa in the multiverse "Even those who have already passed from the world of the living ... Especially those. I made a vow, after all." The vow he's referencing is the one he made with his dying breath in Champion's Trial, where he told Tetsuo to become sucesful and fruitful, just so there would be more to take vengeance upon. We know by now that Umezawas survived both on Dominaria and Kamigawa, but Bolas was in a hurry here, so it makes sense he missed a few people.

• Quick mention is made of the Shivan mana-rig, with Teferi saying it "got up and walked away during the Phyrexian invasion". I'm assuming that's him joking, since he was in the rig itself when he phased Shiv out. He's right that a part of it remained behind and became a kinda mech to fight Phyrexians, as seen on cards like Bend or Break and Scorching Lava.

TIMELINE

Placing the main story is pretty easy for once! Freyalise clearly says Teferi has been gone for three centuries. He left in 4205 A.R., so it should now be roughly 4500 A.R.. Which is confirmed in the Dominaria art book as well. Easy!

Some more minor mentions:

• Radha will be 80 "this winter".
• The Gathans appeared in Keld 50 years ago "more or less". The Dominaria Artbook says the collapse of time happened near the end of the 4300-4500 period. I guess those 50 years could be counted as "the end". It's pretty vague after all.
• We're told there "hadn't been panther people in Urborg since the Brother's War", and that they ruled the island "fairly and wisely for three centuries". Clearly there have been some panther warriors since then, Purraj being the most prominent one we know, so I guess this is referencing the end of their dominance, with a few remnants still hanging around (who become Windgrace Acolyte's later on). The Wiki timeline takes this to mean those three centuries of rule end with the Brother's War. This makes sense. We've known since Planeshift that it was the Sylex Blast that turned Urborg from a jungle into a swamp, and that Windgrace predates that event.

All the continuity problems I've touched upon above can be easily explained away by people (mostly Teferi) just not knowing what they're talking about. But one point that really annoys me, mostly for forcing me to dive back in the already muddy timeline of the Time Streams novel, is Teferi's continued insistence that he spend 40 years in the slow time bubble. Time Streams is not clear on many things, but one of the few things it gives us clearly is Teferi complaining that suddenly everyone is 25 years older than him. There isn't even 40 years between the disaster at Tolaria (3307 A.R.) and Urza's trip to Shiv (3346 AR), which definitey happens after Teferi is saved!

Furthermore, Teferi says he was 9 when he went to the Tolarian Academy, but then when he has the vision of the time machine exploding while in the Urborg rift, he sees his younger self and calls him a nine year old boy. Time Streams makes it clear Teferi was already 14 at the start of the novel though! You'd think a Master of Time would know better. Perhaps he's in his Timebender persona here... I'm just going to assume he's groggy from having been gone 300 years rather than the 100 he was expected and thus gets his dates (and perhaps all the other continuity muck ups) wrong because of that.