Unfortunately the Planar Chaos mini-site, like the one for Time Spiral before it, has fallen off the edge of the internet. And this one actually had a story! Luckily it has been saved from oblivion, so let's start looking into that before delving into the articles!
Destiny, by Michael J. Ryan
Yup. That's the summary alright!
Okay, okay, I'll take this seriously.
In the Stronghold of another timeline, Death Stroke doesn't show Crovax killing Selenia, but Mirri doing so instead. As a result, she is the one who ends up with the curse of vampirism. The two of them fall overboard during the final battle with the Predator in Exodus, but the Weatherlight comes back and Crovax escapes. The story is book-ended with Crovax and Gerrard discussing destiny.
Continuity-wise it's a bit more than a simple "What if Mirri was cursed by Selenia" story. The scenes before Selenia's death don't match up 100% with Rath and Storm or Gerrard's Quest, but neither of those match up with each other anyway. At least this story has the excuse of being from an alternate timeline! But more importantly: in the origin story it was never the case that Selenia had a "kill me and become a vampire" ability. Stuff like Giant Strength and Dregs of Sorrow show that weird things were already happening to Crovax before he killed the angel. Maybe the curse worked differently in this timeline? Then again, Mirri starts talking in Selenia's voice in this story to torment Crovax, so maybe the curse is a more general "Make Crovax feel miserably in any way possible" spell.
- I'm sticking this story on the timeline in 4205 by the way, alongside the original Stronghold/Exodus story. I'll add a "alternate timeline" note so people won't be confused.
- In the main timeline the Weatherlight is en route to pick up Gerrard and Sisay from Volrath's Gardens when the Predator attacks, at which point Crovax tries to sabotage the Weatherlight and Mirri tackles him overboard. Here Gerrard and Sisay are already on board, and Mirri and Crovax fall off due to a ramming attack from the Predator. Apparently having only one dying crewmate, rather than one dying and one turning into a vampire, made saving Sisay much easier. Perhaps because Tahngarth could get back much quicker from bringing the wounded to Orim?
- Mirri's story is followed up upon in Kor Dirge's flavor text, which hints that she became evincar instead of Crovax.
- Huh, that flavor text was changed for Time Spiral Remastered. How odd. I thought it might be because of the word "slave", but Hivestone kept that word in it's flavor text for the reprint...
You know what, let's forego my usual order of mini-site/feature article/Taste the Magic for now, and immediately dive into another story. You'll get why in a moment.
Time Twists and Destinies Interchance, by Matt Cavotta
(From one of the Taste the Magic articles)
Two cat warriors, Shikka and Talack, refuse the offer of some Jedit's Dragoons to leave (what is left of) Efrava. They don't like how Jedit left Efrava to become a mercenary centuries ago. Then vampire Mirri arrives and starts killing people. We learn that after she became evincar Crovax came to slay her, but just as he attacked the two of them were sucked into the time distortion that brought them to this timeline. Mirri's slaughter is stopped by the arrival of a strange new hero; an alternate timeline Jedit who never stopped being loyal to Efrava.
Eh. It's nice to have the story of these characters continue, but annoying that it still tapers off more than ends. There is no final confrontation with Mirri, we don't know where Crovax ended up after being sucked to this timeline, and we don't even see Shikka and Talack meet this new Jedit! It's more of a taster than a full story, and it's a shame it was never followed up upon.
- This story I'll put alongside Planar Chaos on the timeline. In the novels there is not the clear past/alternate present/future distinction that the sets make, so this could've happened at any point during the temporal chaos, but when in doubt I'll stick these stories to the sets they are tied to. The bit with Mirri and Crovax in their own timeline would presumably still be in 4205 A.R., as it sounds pre-Invasion, but I'm not going into that much detail on the timeline for what's barely more than a paragraph.
- The cat warriors see Mirri as "their most beloved ancestor", which actually really nice in a way, as we learned in the Rath Cycle Art Book that Mirri was abandoned by her kin for having mismatched eyes. Great to hear that later generations of cat warriors were less horrible to her!
- It does make me wonder, did the story of the Weatherlight spread after the Invasion, and is Mirri seen as a kind of ancestor worthy of reverence by cat people all over Dominaria, or was she originally from Efrava?
- "The kaleidoscope turned but slightly, and it was Mirri, not Crovax, who delivered the Death Stroke to Selenia." Hehe, I see what you did there mr. Cavotta!
- Mirri became evincar by slaving Volrath "easily". Makes you wonder how she dealt with Greven, Ertai and Belbe... These alternate reality glimpses are remarkably good at making me want to learn more about the stories behind them!
- The fact that the story mentions energy building up, and then a rift grabbing Mirri and Crovax from their own timeline, suggests that these two, and by extension the Planar Chaos versions of Jedit, Braids and Akroma aren't just "temporal mirages", but actually traveled through time and timelines. Which I think would be quite neat. Being from alternate timelines they don't harm established continuity anyway, so why not make them a bit more "real"?
FEATURE ARTICLES
Okay, back to our regular scheduled programming. You know the deal: Rei Nakazawa introduces the set (Order and (Planar) Chaos), then we get an article that talks about flavor text (Flavor from the Chaos,
this time also written by Rei, though with contributions from various other writers), and then one or two other semi-relevant feature articles.
That first article is actually a bit more interesting than the usual summary of book one with some hints for book two though, as we get a little snippet of an actual story! Guess I'm not the only one who can't just see one of these alternate reality cards without wanting to delve into what led up to them! Here we see Ixidor in the desert, creating Akroma, Angel of Fury rather than Akroma, Angel of Wrath. It's super short and pretty irrelevant to the larger continuity, as it's never followed up upon, but completionism is completionism, so on the timeline it goes, alongside the original Onslaught story.
The flavor text article mentions flavor text writer Christa Knott-Dufresne going through fan sites to read up on Dominarian history. I wonder if she ever did get through all the Dominaria novels. I only got to the later Harper Prism stuff when I started working on this blog!
Other than that, let me quickly mention The Color Purple, wich discusses the posibility of adding a sixth color, and Space Academy: Lesson One, a "real life" alternate timeline from "What If week" in which Magic is replaced with a sci-fi themed game. I wonder if that timeline has a Galaxy in Review blog, written by a version of me with implacable spelling.
TASTE THE MAGIC
First, one more story: Thick-Headed Mage. It's about the flavor of a usually very unflavorful mechanic: echo. In an "upscale mage's emporium" a wizard is thinking very bigoted thoughts about two goblins who need supplies for their "echo magic". When the two beat him to the last diamond powder the wizard decides to go after them and take it by force. But the goblins have discovered how they can skip paying the echo cost and come out on top. Their enemy vows to discover their secret.
Eh, it's fine. Nothing special, but for a weekly series it's a fine diversion from the out-of-universe articles.
An "upscale mage's emporium" doesn't sound in line with the state of Dominaria in Time Spiral block, but we've got no idea when it would otherwise happen. The wizard mentions an "Institute", presumably the one "of Arcane Study/ies", and feels the need to point out Stingscourger is "rabid, weathered looking", so maybe this is happening in the revitalized, Dominaria-era Dominaria? (Now there's a confusing sentence!) Or maybe despite the state of the world (and Otaria in particular) Tamingazin is still somehow going strong inside the Magewall (which we saw in the novel The Prodigal Sorcerer). I've already spend to many text on something so trivial, so I'm just going to assume the later and stick this alongside all the other Time Spiral stories.
Delving into the articles, Who's That Girl reveals Radha was almost not in the set! I wonder if we would ever have gotten her later incarnations if the Creative team didn't decide they wanted a non-alternate timeline legendary creature in the set! The article also shows us the original sketch for her card, which Matt decided was not bloody and gritted-teethy enough to match the character from the novels. Other than that the article is mostly quotes from said novels to tell people who haven't read them who Radha actually is.
Brady doesn't explain the reference in the article, which is a shame, since it's by far the most obscure thing in the entire block: Fa'adiya is a forest that appears for all of 2.5 pages in the Arabian Nights comic, and is named in a single narration box!
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Backwards Through the Looking Glass is Savor the Flavor doing What If week, from the point of view of the alternate universe Planar Chaos cards are from. Which results in stuff like this:
"Ever since Alpha we've known Serra as a blue figure, an intellectual sphinx planeswalker, the most brilliant of a race of sphinxes who lap insight from the mana-charged pools of their home Realm. In the alternate reality of Planar Chaos, instead she's a white-aligned battle angel, a warrior less concerned with reading the future and more concerned with battling for justice. We know that this white-aligned Serra commands a legion of angels like the one depicted in the card, but we would have to speculate about the rest. Would Urza have sought the aid of the white-aligned Serra in his fight against his evil progeny Gerrard? It's hard to know, but her sword of justice may have done him more good than the dour predictions of our own blue-aligned Serra."
"Primal Clay shows us a glimpse of a twisted Antiquities set in which the gifted young elementalists Urza and Mishra instead trained as artificers under the tutelage of their mentor Tocasia. That tiny twist to the brothers' beginnings may have completely altered the timeline we know today. It's entirely possible that the Elemental Invasions may even have been avoided completely, and that Dominaria would be a thriving plane free of the machinations of the witch Freyalise."
Bonus points for creativity, points deducted for called Serra an angel herself.
Finally, Act Two of Three has neat style guide art for the Vanishing mechanic, even neater sketch for a white Memory Lapse.
ARCANA'S
No big revalations in the Arcanas this time Just more sketches...
- Planar Chaos Preview Sketches
- Planar Chaos Preview Sketches II
- Planar Chaos Sliver Sketches
- Tenth Edition Howling Mine Art
- The Blasted Grave of Yawgmoth
- Extirpate Sketches
- Planar Chaos Sketch Quickies
- Limb Art Gets New Life
...and art stuff.
Also the announcement of Aaron Forsythe's daughter being born. I've stopped regularly visiting Magicthegathering.com when the daily articles ended, but I feel like Wizards is no longer the kind of company that would do such announcements.
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