The Duelist #39-41 (Urza's Destinty)

And so we reach the final issues of The Duelist. To be honest, there is very little of interest for us here, but as you know I am a completist and I've done all the other issues of this magazine, so let's take a look anyway.

Bloodlines

Writer - Loren L. Coleman
Cover art - Kev Walker
Released August 1999

SUMMARY
Bloodlines spans the centuries between Time Streams and Rath and Storm, and takes us to various corners of Dominaria and Rath, showing what was going on there in the build up to Gerrard's adventures with the Weatherlight. It ends up being more a collection of overlapping stories than one single narrative.

First there is Tolaria, where Urza has embarked on a eugenics project to create the Heir to the Legacy, someone who can understand how to defeat the Phyrexians by having a certain affinity for them without being tempted to their side. Breeding starts in the fast-time zones, but the subjects there lose their bonds to Dominaria's mana, and with that their empathy. So Urza starts to manipulate bloodlines all over the plane in all sorts of ways, from arranged marriages to gene manipulation in fetuses. Throughout the book the Tolarian characters keep discussing the ethics of this project, but while individuals occasionally opt out, the project itself just keeps going.

Scars of the Legacy

Writer - Will McDermott
Original appeared in The Official Urza's Legacy Game Guide
Released online on Will McDermott's website

SUMMARY
Like Time for Remembrance, this story is mostly a summary, though here the framing sequence is more extended. It features Jhoira's last mission as captain of the Weatherlight, in which she goes to Zhalfir to drop off some of the refugees from Serra's Realm. She and Karn meet with Teferi and they reminisce about their adventures together. Then at the end of the evening, Teferi proposes to Jhoira! But she wants to live her own life after years of following Urza, and so decides to turn him down and return to Shiv.

The Duelist #35-38 (Urza's Legacy)

In the period we're currently discussing the novel line was really hitting its stride. After some early weirdness we now have a book for every set, the anthology line has kicked off and soon we'll look at the first trilogy covering older sets. The flipside of that though, is that The Duelist seems to no longer know what to do with the storyline. Features appear in one issue only to be gone in the next and after Born to Greatness wraps-up the level of lore is down in general. I guess that makes sense. Wizards is fully invested into the novels at this point, and if you want people to buy your books you don't go spoiling their stories elsewhere. But don't worry, it's not as bad as around the days of Odyssey and Onslaught, when we will end up in a situation where the books were essentially on their own, with very little connection to even the cards. With Urza's mug on so many cards in his titular block, Wizards is pretty much obliged to cover the storyline in some fashion in their magazine. They just weren't sure how.

LORE
I guess the main attraction here is issue 36's "Past mistakes, Future hope" article, which tells the story of Urza's Legacy. It's not that interesting to us, as it is basically just a summary of Time Streams, which I already covered. There is one illuminating thing in there though. Since it covers the set Urza's Legacy rather than the novel Time Streams, it considers the Tolarian disaster and the Phyrexians attacking Serra's Realm past events. After all, those were already shown in Urza's Saga. Thus it is able to describe the plot of Urza's Legacy as Urza having to return to the scenes of his greatest failures: Tolaria, Serra's Realm and Argoth (by proxy of Yavimaya). I had never thought of it that way, but it does make the split between Saga and Legacy less arbitrary. Saga shows Urza's string of past mistakes, while Legacy is him making amends.

Of course, there is still the odd gear change in Saga when we go from Urza hanging out with Xantcha to him and Barrin building the academy, and Shiv has little to do with this past/amends split, but hey. You can't have everything.

Time Streams

SUMMARY
Since we last saw Urza he has hooked up with Barrin and has founded the Tolarian Academy. There they gather promising wizards and artificers from all over Dominaria and have them work on ways to combat Phyrexia in secret. Not even the students themselves know just what they are working on. Urza, who now goes by the name Malzra, is planning to travel back in time to defeat the Phyrexians before they became a thread. Since silver is the only material capable of surviving the stresses of time travel he creates a golem from the stuff. Xantcha's Heartstone is put in the golem's head, and somehow it gives him a personality of its own. This golem is of course our old friend Karn (Though one of the students, a prankster named Teferi, initially calls him Artie Shovelhead)

Keeping your plans secret from your students turns out to be a bad idea. Karn's best friend, Jhoira, is pining for a lover and thus when she discovers the shipwrecked hottie Kerrick she decides to keep him hidden from the teachers. Unfortunately, Kerrick is actually the Phyrexian Sleeper Agent K'rrick. After gathering enough information through Jhoira he summons a bunch of Phyrexian Negators who slaughter their way through the academy. With only Urza and Karn left, the golem is send back in time. He manages to stop Kerrick from summoning his troops, but the time machine overheats and- BOOM!

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.