A Time for Remembrance

Writer - Will McDermott
Originally appeared in The Official Guide to Urza's Saga
Rereleased online on Will McDermott's website.

SUMMARY
Urza returns to Phyrexia after his cameo on Mind over Matter, informing Barrin about the events of Rath block. The callous way Urza talks about the crew, not even bothering to tell Barrin whether his daughter is safe, gets to the old wizard. He starts writing a letter to Hanna in which he explains his antipathy towards her desire to study artifact by telling her the history of Urza. In the end he realizes he can never send the letter and burns it.

REVIEW
This is one of the strangest parts of the canon. Not because of its content, as much weirder stuff can be found in various anthologies, nor because of its format, considering this canon includes games, choose-your-own-adventures and viral marketing campaigns. Not even because of its obscurity, as we have already looked at much harder to find stuff. No, it is weird because it is one of the most pointless, skippable stories in Magic history, yet simultaneously almost compulsory reading for anyone interested in the Weatherlight Saga. Let me try to explain.

The Duelist #31-34 (Urza's Saga)

When we looked at the Exodus issues of The Duelist I mentioned that with the sudden departure of Pete Venters there suddenly was a lot less lore in the magazine. The effects of that are still seen here. Issue 31 introduces a new feature called "Forgotten Lore", which is really just a renaming of the old "From the Library of Leng" articles, which focus on the lore of an individual card. This will turn out to be an irregular feature though. Dominian FAQ makes a new appearance in issue 34, only to be forgotten about again. Sets will still be accompanied with an article telling their story, but the length and depth of those articles varies greatly. The bottom line is the while there is plenty of stuff in here that will interest Vorthosi, it does come across a bit chaotic, like the magazine doesn't really know what it wants to do with the storyline.

LORE

Let's first talk about the story of Urza's Saga in general. Issue 32 has a 6 page article on how it was created. It has since been reprinted on Magicthegathering.com. There is very little lore in the article itself, instead it deals with the behind the scenes process, but it prints a number of pictures taken from the style guide, which is always awesome to see.

Planeswalker

Planeswalker
Writer - Lynn Abbey
Cover Art - R.K. Post
Released September 1998

SUMMARY
We start with a prologue from Urza's point of view. He returns to Koilos a few years after the Sylex Blast and decides to blame all his woes on the Phyrexians. We then skip about 3000 years and see the rest of the story through the eyes of Xantcha, a Phyrexian Sleeper Agent who rebelled against her masters and is now trying to get Urza to focus on fighting against Phyrexia. Unfortunately Urza has gone completely stark raving mad in the intervening years. The story keeps switching between Xantcha and Urza in the present day on Dominaria and their previous adventures across the Multiverse.

The Colors of Magic

The Colors of Magic
Editor - Jeff Lebow
Cover Art - Gary Ruddell
Released February 1999

What? You thought that after Artifacts Cycle - Book I we were going to do Artifacts Cycle - Book II? Nah, we are going to look at this other thing first!

Actually, in the future I do plan to finish the book cycles before covering any anthologies or other books released simultaneously. That's much more convenient when it comes to summarizing and figuring out continuity and timeline stuff. This is something of a special case though. For starters, the Artifacts Cycle is very episodic, with most of Planeswalker taking place centuries to millennia after The Brothers' War and having a whole new setting and cast, save for Urza. More importantly though, The Colors of Magic is supposed to take place in the wake of The Brothers' War, showing what happened to Dominaria after the Sylex Blast. We'll see that some of the writers had very liberal interpretations of  what "in the wake of" means, but since a number of stories do happen directly after the Sylex Blast, and some of them even pick up on the later lives of some minor characters from The Brothers' War, I thought it was best to look at it now, with that story still fresh in mind.

Angel of Vengeance, by Richard Lee Byers
Our first story sees the angle Kotara being summoned by a civic guildmage called Sabul Hajeen. Sabul's brother has been murdered, and he sends Kotara out to kill the murder, who escaped Zhalfirin justice. After that though, he starts having her kill accomplices and relatives of the killer. These evil acts start having their effect on Kotara, who changes both physically and mentally, losing her radiance and her connection to "the Divine Will". Eventually this frees her of her summons, as in the end she is no longer a creature of white mana, and thus unaffected by Sabul's summoning spell. When the family of the killer summons a demon to kill their opponent though, Kotara realizes that even despite her now being a fallen angel, it would still be wrong to let the demon wreak havoc in Zhalfir. Thus she returns and sacrifices her life so Sabul, who has seen the error of his ways, has the time to cast a killing spell on the demon.

The Duelist #3-4 (Fallen Empires)

This time I cover the last two issues of The Duelist I had skipped on account of not having a copy of them before. There isn't a whole lot of stuff in here so it will be a short review, but don't worry, I'll be back to the Weatherlight-era books after this!

Once more I must thank Mike Linnemann for allowing me a look at these old issues!

FALLEN EMPIRES
Issue three has the official Wizards coverage of the Fallen Empires story. It's a one paragraph explanation of the situation in Sarpadia, with its various empires and rebellions, followed up with three pages of letters supposedly written during that time. The first letter is from a bunch of besieged dwarves asking the Havenwood elves for help. The elves decline because they are to busy with the Thallid rebellion but promising to send the letter on to the Icatians. The Icatian say they can't help either but will pass the request on to the Ebon Hand.The Ebon Hand do promising help, but the final letter from the Dwarves reveals that the mercenaries they send have joined the attacking orcs. Oh, and there is a back and forth between Vodalia and Icatia in there as well, with the Vodalians asking for medicine and Icatia saying they don't even have enough for themselves.

The Brothers' War

The Brothers' War
Writer - Jeff Grubb
Cover art - R.K. Post
Released May 1998

SUMMARY
The Urza-Mishra War comic ended with a meeting between Tawnos and Ashnod, the second-in-commands of Urza and Mishra, so it's appropriate that The Brothers' War prologue starts with a meeting between those two. But where the comic promises an alliance that "changed the course of the war", here it is an exercise in futility. Both of them realize that there is too much bad blood between them and between the brothers to do anything but fight until either side wins. They even think there never was a time when the brothers got along... smash cut to just such a time, over 50 years earlier.

The Duelist #1-2 & The Duelist Supplement 1994 (Arabian Nights & Antiquities)

Let me open with thanking the amazing Mike Linneman for providing me with scans of these issues, allowing me to finally complete my look at the pre-rev issues of The Duelist! I'd tell you all to go read his articles over on GatheringMagic.com, but considering the difference in hits between my blog and that site you probably already are.

The main point of interest here is the original telling of the Antiquities story from the supplement, though I'll also quickly go through some interesting sounding stuff from the first two proper issues. Or just the first one really, there isn't any lore stuff in number two.

For the sake of clarity: the supplement is sometimes called #0 or #1.5 online. Apparently there were also versions in 1995 and 1996. I haven't been able to find out much about those, but I'm assuming they don't have lore relevance. The 1995 has a cool cover though.