Conflux Online

INTRODUCING THE CONFLUX

As is usual at this point our first introduction to the new set comes through a mini site (split up in The Shards Collide, Sowing Fear, Reaping War & Claws of an Ancient Evil) and a feature article (Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker). These tell us that the shards are converging, though that can't have come as that great a surprise after the Planeswalker's Guide hinted at it... and we already knew the name of the next set was "Conflux".

A bigger reveal is that Nicol Bolas has been fermenting war all along. Some stuff he's been doing we knew, just not that he was behind it (He's the bigger power behind Malfegor and the Seekers of Carmot that the Planeswalker's Guide hinted at, and got Marisi to break the Coil), other stuff is entirely new (as we are introduced to Rakka Mar & Gwafa Hazid). It also sets up his motivation of wanting to get his powers back after the Mending, though the various Alara-era sources are a bit ambiguous if his plan would bring him back to old school planeswalker levels, merely stop him from deteriorating further, or something in between.

Also, I've been made aware that there actually was a hint about the Skyward Eye being evil before Conflux... it was just in the flavor text! Which makes it extra strange nothing about that made it into the Planeswalker's Guide!

It feels a bit odd to just be told all this, especially compared to the last time Nicol Bolas was revealed as the big bad, which came as the stinger of the second novel in a trilogy, but I guess that if you don't build things up too much the reveal can't be a let down either. We should also remember that although I reviewed it earlier, Agents of Artifice, which showed Bolas hanging around on Grixis, was released alongside Conflux, making his reveal on the mini-site more of a "Hey, this character you never expected to see again is back!", rather than a lackluster way off paying of a long hinted at return. While people at the time were certainly complaining about only getting one book for a block rather than one per set, we shouldn't compare these articles to something like the Theros: Beyond Death story being summarized in one article.

We also hear that "Monstrous entities sprang to life out of the Maelstrom", which will not be featured in the upcoming novel, but will lead to some card designs, like the Child of Alara and the Maelstrom Wanderer.

SAVOR THE FLAVOR

Now we're beyond the Planeswalker's Guide Savor the Flavor has a bunch more unique information, though it mostly still deals with the basics (the shards are colliding! Nicol Bolas exists!) and less story related questions, like how card art is done or what the flavor is behind certain game actions.

• The First Days of the Conflux mentions Asha sacrificing herself to kill Malfegor back before Alara broke, and also that Progenitus is whispering to Mayael that war is necessary. In Alara Unbroken we'll see it's not actually Progenitus, just Bolas pretending to be him.
• Incursion Zones and a follow up question in Tipping Scales deal with the geography of Alara merging. The latter makes it sound quite complex. After showing the shards as a Venn diagram, Doug says...

"Now, are the shards disc-shaped, or partially see-through? No. They are worlds, likely just as spherical as our own. The model uses 2-D sheets of kitchen paper because it's harder for us to think of overlap in 3-D terms. But if you imagine partially-insubstantial globes merging into one another—in a way that old John Venn never dreamed of in his wildest days at Cambridge—that's closer to what's happening. Boundaries are collapsing. Spaces are fusing. Distances are remapping themselves. The properties of one world are showing partially through the lands of the next. When it comes down to it, it's not pretty like a mathematical model—it's the reality of Alara."

• ...but I'm afraid that wont come across all that clear in the novel. There is a bit where a Nayan temple bursts through the ground in Jund, but also one where some mountains of Jund crumble and reveal Grixis beyond, which makes it sound more like the shards are all pizza-slice shapes slotting in next to each other. Also, my fantasy map loving heart is a bit sad Doug wont commit to anything more precise than that the shards are "likely just as spherical as our own" (emphasis mine).

• Planeswalking into Conflict talks about the difficulty of writing planeswalkers and originates the concept that they are defined by the ability to leave.
• Long, long, loooong ago I did an article about everything we knew about the Elder Dragons. This was before the Dominaria set and Chronicle of Bolas, so the answer was "very little". Since Jeff Lee's old site was questionable continuity at best, the only definitely canon reference to the Elder Dragon War I could find was in the planeswalker profile of Nicky B. Turns out that there was also The One, The Only, Nicol Bolas, which has the line "One of the five Elders who survived an ancient war of the dragons, and mightiest of the five". My point that there was no actual published source in the war, just the occasional reference after the whole storyline community had come to accept it as gospel through Jeff Lee, still stands though.
• The One, The Only, Nicol Bolas also talks about a mocked up cover of Alara Unbroken that cropped out Bolas to keep the surprise reveal. Since the novel doesn't have time to set up a mystery and just opens up with him talking about his plan we're really only talking about the reveal in the above articles. Still cool that they went through so much trouble (and a shame that all the set's card names, including "Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker", were spoiled before Shards had even come out!)

• The Soul of the World is listed as a story on the Wiki, but it's really "just" an article with a description of Mayael's initiation and her seeing the Progenitus myth we already heard about in the Planeswalker's Guide. There is one big difference: Progenitus being hit by poison forms his earthly body, rather than making it so his "nature was revealed to be a five-headed hydra". Here the story also continues slightly further, revealing two of its five heads are withered.
• Since Mayael sees this happen through her connection to the memories of all previous Anima it does suggest it actually happened. Though since we also know a planeswalker was behind Alara shattering, rather than Progenitus deciding to end the world, maybe Cylia widely misinterpreted what she was seeing? Was Progenitus actually trying to stop said planeswalker?
• The article ends with Mayael seeing Progenitus waking up, and "As Alara explodes into a maelstrom of violence and war, Progenitus unleashes his fury on anything that stands in his way. His body again whole, the hydra-god is untouchable." Which sounds like Progenitus awoke during the Conflux phase of the story (which makes sense, given his card appears in that set). This is a bit hard to square with Alara Unbroken though, where Mayael shows up, goaded into war by Bolas's vision of a fake Progenitus and an engineered attack by Jundian dragons. Perhaps it happened between pages, but you'd think she'd at least mention god waking up when she met Ajani again! I think the best way to square things is to assume that after the final battle in Alara Unbroken Mayael went back to Naya and saw Progenitus rise, and the "maelstrom of violence and war" mentioned in this article refers to lingering conflicts after the novel.

This piece of Conflux promotional art is 100% non-canon. Elspeth never meets Bolas and Tezzeret isn't even part of the story!

STORIES

An Etherium Tale, by Doug Beyer

Harborgate tower has disappeared from Esper to Bant. We learn there are Seekers of Carmot hidden among all the towers that are at risk of being displaced across the planes, to try and find the source of etherium wherever they end up. In this particular case it's a bust, as the Seeker is killed by her sister upon discovery of her zealotry.

This is a weird story, written more like the lines of a play but with "planeswalkers guide" style interludes. It's a neat look into the workings of Esper, which alongside Grixis only gets a minor showcase in Alara Unbroken (probably because it was being saved for Test of Metal), and the way the Seekers manipulate everyone, but ultimately fairly inconsequential.

Circumnavigation, by Doug Beyer

An unnamed character from Jund sees his clan killed during the Conflux by Zarratha, a lich lord from the necropolis of Unx. He then runs away and journeys through all the shards to end up back in Grixis from the other side, where he finds his now-zombified clansmen. By then he's become a Dragonsoul Knight though, and he kills Zarratha.

This one blurs the borders between story and article, interrupting the events with game related asides like "It's hard being a 2/2 when worlds are colliding." and real world commentary like "It's like if you crossed into the next country over, and it turned out they run their civilization not just on electricity and geothermal energy, but also on the perfume of daisies." The concept of the story is neat, but very short (after running into the lich again it simply states "It's the story of how the lich Zarratha perished under a siege of dragonfire, and the story of how a knight finally cremated his fallen friends, and returned home to begin a new warrior-clan, and a new life"), and the interruptions take away from it for me.

Continuity-wise the story is also a bit of a let down. It starts out saying the the knight might have been from Clan Tol Antaga, which seems confirmed later when it is mentioned he met Sarkhan Vol, who indeed hangs out with the Antaga for a bit in Alara Unbroken. Yet it says Kresh is the leader of that clan, despite the Planeswalker's Guide clearly stating he doesn't want to lead. More on that in the Alara Unbroken review though, where Kresh is also shown as leading the group.

It's also a shame that the lord of Unx is apparently a previously unknown character named Zarratha. This would've been an ideal opportunity to continue the story of Eliza, who is shown conquering Unx in Encounter at the Necropolis! Especially as she threatened to burn Unx with dragonfire in that story, setting up a nice mirror with the Dragonsoul Knight. Although if it had been a follow up I would have liked a more epic final battle than just one line stating the knight wins. Gotta have more respect for returning characters than that!

 

This story starts during the Conflux, but at one point the knight thinks back to meeting Sarkhan Vol "a couple of years ago". If he was part of the Tol Antaga, that would mean his journey stretches on for several years post Alara Unbroken, as Sarkhan doesn't run into Kresh until very shortly before the Conflux. The story isn't definite about him being Antaga though, and Sarkhan was on Jund for two years, so who knows. I'm just going to put this story at "around the time of Alara Unbroken" though, as getting more specific really can't be done.