Flight of the White Cat

Writer - Brady Dommermuth

Story - Brady Dommermuth, Doug Beyer and Jenna Helland

Illustrators - Greg Staples, Rafa Garres & Dave Kendall

Letterer - Brian Dumas

Art Director - Jeremy Jarvis

Based on characters by Brady Dommermuth and Aleksi Briclot

Released October 2008

SUMMARY

It can be found here.

Part one: Jazal puts his brother Ajani on patrol, though his fellows say he's jinxed because he's albino. Humans show up to hunt Ajani and his pridemates abandon him. Jazal shows up to save him, and takes a scroll from the humans with a picture of a white, one-eyed nacatl on it.

Part two: During the festival of Marisi the shaman Zaliki sneaks into Jazal's place. Ajani follows her. She goes away with an excuse and he sees drawings of himself on the walls, wondering "brother, what have you been hiding". That night someone saying "Please forgive me" drops an artifact that summons monsters in the pride's camp. The monsters kill Jazal, which triggers Ajani's spark, sending him to Jund.

Part three: After running from Karrthus, Ajani meets Sarkhan Vol, who is revealed as the "stranger" he was telling the events of the previous two parts to in the narration. Sarkhan talks a bit about magic and revenge. In the end Ajani figures out how to planeswalk and heads back to avenge his brother.

Shards of Alara Online

Right. How am I going to do this with the current state of the Magic website? 

Well, I've gone to the Wiki, checked out the articles linked on the bottom of the Alara page and everything from the Savor the Flavor page. That should give me the initial introduction to the setting, and what stories need to be put onto the timeline, plus whatever else might turn up in the main storyline column. To actually read those articles I can look them up on MaxMakesMagic's listing of articles in the Internet Archive. All of which was enough of a pain in the back that I didn't feel like trying to track down all the Arcana's and Card of the Day entries. Maybe I'll return for those some day. Maybe. For now, let's first dive into the introduction of one of my favorite planes!

INTRODUCING FIVE NEW WORLDS

As always, we start with a handful of feature articles (Alara, a World Broken, Ripping a World Apart & A Shards Day's Night), and a Mini Site (split in various parts: Five Worlds, Life Imitates Mana, Fiends and Behemoths & Planeswalkers of Alara). I also found this reference to something called "Alara Explorer" on the Mini Site, which sounds cool, but unfortunately I can't find it anywhere.

Finally there is Planes of Existence: Alara, which is dated July 25, 2008, which is before all the other stuff. I think that's just because it got pre-dated to the launch of the (then) new version of the website though.

Also, I thought the Shard-murals were from the mini-site, but if they were I can't find those either. Maybe they were in the explore section? Thanks to this Magic art Tumblr for compiling them.

A Planeswalker's Guide to Alara

A Planeswalker's Guide to Alara

Authors - Doug Beyer, Jenna Helland

Cover Art - Raymond Swanland

First Printing - September 2008

...and a whole bunch of other people.

Review

For the past few years Wotc had been putting up bits and pieces of their style guides, which storyline fans obviously loved, leading to them asking to see the whole thing. Eventually WotC put up a poll asking if people would buy one if they could, and since everybody said they would, here we have the Planeswalker's Guide to Alara. It's not really a style guide though, as it has loads of card art rather than just design sketches, and I assume all the text is at least updated from the original style guide to fit changes made through the development proces. So it's really more of a precursor to the later artbooks rather than a true style guide.

The guide gives you a quick introduction to the setting: how Alara used to be one plane before it broke into five shards, what life is like in those shards, which people live there, occasionally some history facts, and finally an overview of the four planeswalkers from Shards of Alara. All of which should be very interesting to hardcore storyline fans, and is accompanied with illustrations from both the cards and the style guide, which always look amazing.

...maybe a bit less so due to my scanner.

Yet while the artbooks were enough of a succes to last four years and eight entries, the Planeswalker's Guide series was cancelled after just this book, with the overviews of new worlds moving back to free online content. So what happened? Well, I can think of three reasons why this series was less successful.

Agents of Artifice

Writer - Ari Marmell
Cover Artist - Aleksi Briclot
First Printing - February 2009

SUMMARY

We open with Kallist Rhoka & Liliana Vess living together (she's just turned down his offer of marriage) when a bunch of thugs attack them looking for a mister Jace Beleren. Kallist and Liliana used to be Jace's friends but are on the outs with him at the moment. Still they (well, mostly Liliana) feel they have to go warn him. They're too late though, and Jace is killed.

...and there was much rejoicing, because remember: a large chunk of the storyline community hated the new planeswalkers at this point. We're only now covering the book that made everybody like Jace!

Except of course Jace isn't dead. Killing who we think was Jace undid a memory swap spell, and we discover that the Kallist we've been following is actually Jace, and it's the real Kallist has just been killed. Shaken by the return of his memories Jace runs out into the street. Meanwhile Liliana kills the thugs... but then we learn she was in on the plot!

Yeah, kinda like that.

Before we hear what that plot is though... flashback time!