Vision: The Backstory

While working on the Mirage timeline article (which I will publish directly after this post) I ran into the problem that certain older websites were not only down on their original location, but that the reposts I had been linking to in my older articles have also disappeared. So to prevent link rot in the future, I'm reposting those to my blog now, so I can always point to these entries if they come up in the future.

Second entry: Visions: the Backstory. The archived version of the page can be found here.

Mirage - The Story of Jamuraa

While working on the Mirage timeline article (which I will publish directly after this post) I ran into the problem that certain older websites were not only down on their original location, but that the reposts I had been linking to in my older articles have also disappeared. So to prevent link rot in the future, I'm reposting those to my blog now, so I can always point to these entries if they come up in the future.

First up: Mirage - The Story of Jamuraa. The archive of the original page can be found here.

Magic Story: Guilds of Ravnica & Ravnica Allegiance

Writer - Nicky Drayden
Originally released October 2018 - February 2019

SUMMARIES
There are ten stories here, five each for Guilds of Ravnica and Ravnica Allegiance. You can just go read them on the Magic Story page of course, but people seem to like it when I include summaries, so I will. Check out the stories themselves first if you don't want spoilers!

Under the Cover of Fog
Merret, a minor Dimir operative, steals an Elixer of Focus, but gets in trouble when Grimbly Wothis, the minotaur he stole it from, chases him to his house. There it is discovered Merret's baby has eaten bread soaked in the elixer and developed powerful magical powers. Wothis want the baby as payment, but then guildmaster Lazav turns up. He wipes the minotaur's mind and forgives Merret for his incompetency in exchange for altering the minds of his family and inserting an "aunt" into their home who will tutor the kid.

Testing the Dark Waters
An Izzet scientist, Leighbet, discovers a way to make plants immune to electricity but gets fired for unauthorized use of equipment. She sets up her own lab and hires an assistant, Tamsyn. While attempting to make humanoids electro-proof Tamsyn kills the test subjects so the project remains secret. Leighbet signs up for some Simic experiment to make more money to keep the experiments going but is horribly mutated as those experiments react to the magic she has herself been exposed to. She hides in the sewers. Tamsyn tracks her down and reveals she's a Dimir agent, but Leighbet manages to kill her.

Musings Magic Special

Editor - Steven Tice
Published by Calliope Comics
Released fall 1996

Musings was a magazine about comic books published by Calliope Comics, which appears to be a comic book store that also did some publishing on the side. I can't find much on them on the internet, but these days their Facebook page still talks about selling Magic cards, so I guess them devoting an issue of their magazine to our favorite card game was a natural fit.

This issue was mostly forgotten to time until someone put a picture of its cover up on the comics section of the MTGWiki's List of Storyline Sources (despite this being neither a comic nor on that list of sources...) Fans have since tracked it down, and thanks to the amazing @stillcary sharing it with me I can now cover it on this blog!

While not an official WotC publication, the magazine has interviews with a bunch of artists and WotC insiders. Among the things they share here are lore tidbits that never made it into anything WotC put out itself, so this is a great source for people interested in what I call "shadow continuity", the things WotC creates behind the scenes that don't end up in any finished product but parts of which tend to get out when creators interact with fans. It's tricky business to handle, as the line between "this is canonical, we just haven't published it yet" and "this is work-in-progress which may change before it gets to publication" is a vague one, and even if something is considered 100% canonical in-house by the current creative team there is no guarantee that future creative teams will agree with, or even know of, that something. So thread carefully when handeling material like this. If you are like me though, and love any snippet of information about all the unpublished work of the Pete Venters continuity era, dive in!

Magic Calendars

One of the more obscure entries in the Magic canon is the collection of calendars WotC has released over the years. Most of them just have some pretty pictures and nothing else but a few actually contained relevant lore, including the backstory of some legendary creatures and maps of various continents of Dominaria. I had pretty much resigned myself to not covering them, but then the always excellent Magic Librarities website uploaded a whole bunch of scans of them, allowing me to take a look anyway.

The ones that I will be covering here are the monthly calendars up to 1999 and the 1997 "365 days in Dominia" daily calendar. The ones released later (at least the ones that I know off) just show art, so they are not as interesting for lore junkies. I don't know if this list is exhaustive, but we can always do another addendum article, can't we?

Quick note: for a long time I thought there must've been another daily calendar, as Jeff Lee claimed to have taken his info on the Elder Dragon War from one. His description matched the "365 days in Dominia" calendar pretty well, except for the inconvenient fact that there is nothing on Elder Dragons in that one! The later discovery of unused flavor text for Elder Land Wurm which did talk about the War suggests to me that Jeff was misremembering things. I think it is likely that he took info on various legendary creatures from the "365 days in Dominia" calendar but was given the stuff on Elder Dragons by Pete Venters directly, and that he conflated the two when talking about it years later. (If another daily calendar ever turns up though, I'll certainly cover it!)

Core Set 2019 Player's Guide

Last time I said I wasn't planning on covering the Player's Guides, just the stories, but you know how it is with new year's resolutions... Consider this review that one glass of champagne on a new years reception before you actually stop drinking for a month.

It has recently come to my attention that the Player's Guides, the little booklets you get with bundles, once again contain story relevant information from time to time. Unfortunately I haven't been able to figure out exactly which ones have relevant stuff in them and which just have info about mechanics and cards. The Dominaria one had some stuff that initially seemed interesting, but it turns out everything in there also appeared in The Art of Magic the Gathering: Dominaria. Well, the timeline in the booklet put the Thran at 5000 years ago instead of 5000 years before the birth of Urza, but other than that one mistake (which fits in a long tradition of moving the Thran about on the timeline) there isn't really anything to discuss now we've already covered the art book.

The Core 2019 Player's Guide is different though. Perhaps it's because there isn't a Core 2019 Art Book, but there is actually some very noteworthy stuff in there. Not a lot, mind you, it's just a thin booklet, but unique info we've never (officially) gotten anywhere else.

Unbowed

Writer - Cassandra Khaw
Originally released August-September 2018

Return to Dominaria and Chronicle of Bolas have dragged this blog into the present day and I found that I quite liked writing stuff that is more relevant to the current Vorthos discussion. So I think I'm going to try and do more reviews on newer stuff, alternating between covering recent stories and older material. It's going to be a bit of an adjustment, as I can't do my usual deep dives into continuity for these stories, not having analysed the Gatewatch era as thoroughly as the earlier periods of the storyline, but on the plus side, if recent stories start referencing older continuity (say, the plane Cabralin, to name a completely random example) it will be good to cover that on the blog in a timely manner, rather than just pointing it out on twitter.

Since I'll also need time in my schedule to continue reviewing older stuff (I want the review of Nicol Bolas's first appearance in Legends II out before the conclusion of Bolas's story in the third Ravnica set at least) I will not cover every single recent source. My plan is to do reviews for the actual stories as soon as possible after they wrap up, but other sources, like art books, player's guides, roleplaying supplements, and whatever else WotC decides to release next, will have to wait until I a) get my hand on them and b) have space in my schedule for an extra review.

So, new year, new direction! Let's see how it goes! First I'll have to catch up with everything released since Chronicle of Bolas, starting with Unbowed, the Vivien Reid story.

SUMMARY
The story can be found through the following links.

• Chapter 1
• Chapter 2
• Chapter 3

For those who prefer me summarizing things: Vivien Ried visits the vampire kingdom of Luneau on Ixalan and is horrified by its treatment of the local wildlife. When she tries to save a monstrosaur during a gladiatorial battle she gets captured. The vamps try to get the secrets of her Arkbow out of her, but she escapes and causes all the zoo animals to stampede and destroy Luneau.