Kamigawa/Legends II Timeline Update

This was originally part of a larger article with a few updates and callbacks to earlier reviews, but when I actually wrote it all down it got a bit more extensive the other points. So rather than dominate that article I'm splitting it off here.

So, when I did the Kamigawa Trilogy Review Ethan Fleischer (who you all should be familiar with) commented that the upcoming War of the Spark art book might be relevant for the placement of those books. Well, by now that upcoming book has come up to my house, and while there isn't the clear "Tetsuo killed Bolas in [[year]]" date I was hoping for, there is certainly a bunch of stuff relevant to Kamigawa and the Legeds II trilogy to discuss here!

Oh, and just to be clear, I'm not going to go through the entire book, I've got Ravnica reviews to work on instead. For those interested in a review: just like all the other art books it is full of gorgeous art, and while it doesn't do the deep-dive into a specific world like the previous ones it does give an overview of just about every plane Bolas has even peripherally been involved in, all planeswalkers featured in War of the Spark, and even gives us some new facts, like finally explaining why Bolas wanted the Eldrazi freed (basically, he hoped their threat to the Multiverse would lure enough planeswalkers to Zendikar to use the Elder Spell there). All in all, another great book, heartily recommended!

Now, on to the timeline discussion!

Another Look at The Duelist #1-3

As a little breather between Kamigawa and Ravnica… something completely different!

Four years ago, when the world was still young, I reviewed the first few issues of The Duelist. (Here and here) I didn’t, and still don’t, actually own the first three though. The first issues goes for upwards of 100 euros on Magiccardmarket, if there are even listings for it, and that’s just more money than I’m willing to spend on these curiosa. So I had to rely on scans from other people. And while I’m still very glad those were provided to me, eh… turns out they weren’t complete!

In the decades that have passed since 2016 the amazing Cary of mtglore.com has uploaded complete scans of these early issues, allowing us to actually go through them in their entirety, which has revealed a number of interesting little tidbits! So, check out the full issues here, or follow me to below the jump break for the highlights!

Kamigawa Overview

So, after looking at 3 novels, 3 fatbook booklets, 20 vignettes and loads of articles and arcana’s, what can we say about Kamigawa as a whole?

Well for one, it’s really good.

The worldbuilding and designs are, in my opinion at least, fantastic. Even the bizarre kami designs look great to me, even though some people seem to dislike them. Only the ororchi looking a bit goofy. But that's not a big surprise, flavorwise the set was always going to do fine. WotC had already shown of their worldbuilding chops with the popular setting of Mirrodin. Storywise though? Now there the quality is a very nice surprise!

WotC doing an entire block where the story was one of the main draws was rather a wild idea considering they had squandered so much of the story’s quality since the end of the Weatherlight Saga. Of the 12 books that had been published after Apocalypse, I actively dislike 9! The other 4 were written by Scott McGough though, so perhaps someone at WotC was paying attention to the reaction to these novels. Giving him this trilogy was certainly a good move. I've already covered why I like them so much, but let me reiterate it here: they tell a pretty splendid action story with loads of fun and engaging characters. Probably in my top 10 Magic stories, and that "probably" comes from the difficulty of deciding what counts as a "story" (for example, do you count "The Truth of Names" and "Release", or do you need to take the entirety of Tarkir and Kaladesh as entries?) Kamigawa is definitely in my top if we're counting trilogies as single entries.

Saviors of Kamigawa Player's Guide

 

Another short review, as this booklet contains just another summary, this time of Heretic, another glossary and another batch of character blurbs. The one extra bit is an article on the “Shinen”, manifestations of the spirit world beyond the veil. As always, you can find the relevant scans here.

The summary links the rising of the ghost samurai around Konda at the end of Heretic to the “shinen” reaching its breaking point (as in, the veil between worlds blurring beyond definition) the moment Toshi stole TWWT. Cool to have an explanation for this somewhat random development in the novels. On the less cool side, the text doubles down on Michiko’s mother dying in childbirth, which we saw in the Betrayers booklet as well, but which was already contradicted in the Outlaw novel.

The Shinen articles tells us that-

“In the many millennia before the Kami War, the denizens of Kamigawa gave no thought to a place called the spirit world. They believed that the kami lived in the material world – the only world that mortals knew.”

The Champions booklet said that people have been worshiping the kami for “centuries”, significantly shorter than millennia. Those two facts taken together seem to suggest that there was something that changed a few centuries before the Kami War. Could this be proof that the Apocalypse Chime disrupting veil between worlds actually happened centuries before Konda started mucking about with stealing a kami? (If you've got no idea what I'm talking about here, check the timeline portion of my review of the Kamigawa trilogy) Eh, probably not. I think the intention was to say that people didn't know about the spirit world until the Kami War, but it’s fun to speculate! Perhaps the weakening barrier allowed Kamigawans to first perceive the spirit world, or merely made them interested into researching it. Stories like the Eight-and-a-Half-Tails vignette do suggest at least some people already knew of the spirit world. More knowledge about the role of kami in the world could lead to them being seen as gods, or perhaps the weakened barrier led to them taking a more active role in mortal life, which in turn led to them being revered? And this newfound worship of the kami could explain why it took a few centuries until someone like Konda came along who was willing to do the blasphemous act of imprisoning a god.

Again, pure speculation, hence I didn't include it in my actual timeline discussion. In the comments of that review Ethan Fleischer said the War of the Spark artbook might actually have some hints towards the placement of Kamigawa, so we'll see soon if this theorizing will get thrown out. Glad that I've gotten it out my system while it was still possible though!

Saviors of Kamigawa Online

You know the drill by now. Some online articles and a whole bunch of (slightly) lore related Arcana shorts. Let’s just dive into them!

Feature Articles

Saving Grace is Rei Nakazawa’s introduction to the set. Like with the Betrayers article, he doesn’t add much though. He talks about how the weakened barrier between the utushiyo and kakuriyo has allowed the kirin, the spirits of great figures from Kamigawa’s past and the onna to cross over into the mortal realm, but this is really just namedropping a few cycles from the set rather than giving any real storyline info.

Tales From Beyond the Veil is Jay Moldenhauer-Salazar’s flavor text article. He says that from this point on, the flavor text writers could actually see the art for which they were writing text! Clearly this had already been possible on some occasions in the past (I want a banana this big!), but from now on it becomes standard practice, which seems like a very good development. Other than that, Jay points out that the “weakening of the veil between worlds” is more prominently featured in the set than in the novel, which is certainly true. Luckily this is not an inconsistency that causes any contradictions, just a matter of focus.

The only other feature article you might find interesting from a lore perspective is Setting the Standard, which has Bill Rose talking about Invasion. Just the card side of things, but there is some cool concept art in there.

Kamigawa Trilogy Review

 

 

REVIEW

So, finally, after the Outlaw, Heretic and Guardian summaries, you get to hear my opinion on the Kamigawa trilogy. Although by now have probably noticed that I pretty much agree with the general consensus in the community: these books are great!

One of the main reasons for that is the character work. A while back I was complaining about the flatness of characters on Mirrodin (at least until Cory Herndon came along with Fifth Dawn), and how I couldn’t tell you what the personality of even an important characters like Bruenna was supposed to be. On Kamigawa though, virtually everyone has personality in spades. Whether it is snarky yet conflicted Toshi, smarmy Mochi, keen and righteous Michiko, brutal yet devout Hidetsugu or even a minor character like the grizzled war-vet Toshi runs into when he visits a ruined Eiganjo  or the serene kitsune elders, Kamigawa feels like a place full of real people, all of them distinct, and most of them very interesting. Scott McGough manages to get across a lot about who these characters are very quickly, making you care about them almost instantly. Making it all the harder when he then kills off a lovable scamp (when he's not being a brutal thug) like Marrow-Gnawer, but all the sweeter when a thouroughly loathable Choryu or Mochi gets their due. Although he then give Chroryu such a horrid fate in Hidetsugu's hands that you somehow still come back to feeling sympathy for him again.

Plus, these characters are all just so much fun. Sometimes they are actually being funny, like with Toshi’s glib remarks or him bantering with Sharp-Ear or Kobo (or more accurately, bantering against the stoic monk). Sometimes the fun just comes from how the characters act naturally, like Marrow-Gnawer's speech patterns of "No, no, no. This is bad and you are stupid. Go away Toshi." Even when characters you both like but who can’t stand each other interact (Toshi and Sharp-Ear, Sharp-Ear and Nagao), it’s a pleasure to read them trading barbs.

Not these kinds of barbs.

Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa

Writer - Scott McGough
Cover Art - Donato Giancola
First Printing - May 2005

SUMMARY
In the prologue Michiko, still living with the kitsune in Jukai, sends a kanji message to Toshi. He sends a reply saying he's quite busy, but will come to her eventually. Eiganjo has fallen, Konda is missing, and the soratami are conquering in the Takenuma and Jukai.

Toshi is back at Minamo, seeing aspects of the All-Cosuming Oni of Chaos eating the library. He's already regretting leaving That Which Was Taken there, but can't teleport it out as Night's Reach has forbidden him form brining it through her realm. He also finds captain Nagao and his surviving men trapped in the room with the thing, as it seems to repel the Oni somehow. Toshi meets with Hidetsugu, who shows him how lesser Oni are razing the Soratami city above. Hidetsugu wants Toshi to commit to the hyozan fully, but Toshi wants to keep playing all his allegiances against one another to stay independent. He manages to get away, but there is a great scene where the two former... friends? allies? look at each other as Toshi teleports away, knowing they are becoming enemies.

Saviors of Kamigawa Vignettes

For the last collection of short stories, just as before, we have a mini site, but it seems the content on those is steadily decreasing. No links to articles at all this time around, not even a FAQ! Just the stories! Luckily it’s the stories that I’m actually interested in. So let's just dive right in.

War’s Wage, by Jeff Grubb

A mad warrior arrives at a village babbling about Kataki, War’s Wage following him. The villagers are unsure what to do with him, as aiding him might anger Kataki, but sending the poor sod on his way might also be seen as aiding him. The narrator, who was the one to first spot the warrior, kills him in an attempt to appease Kataki. But then Kataki manifests and kills the villagers, saying that killing the man had denied him his vengeance, and that there has been a long line of these murders since the original person who offended him was slain before he could claim his vengeance. The narrator runs, having become the last person in a long line to earn Kataki’s anger.

Not much to say about this one. It’s cool, the twist works (though you’ve probably figured it out by the time the narrator kills the old warrior), and it conjures up a good atmosphere, really selling the uncertainty among the villagers and just how screwed up Kamigawa has become, with each action or inaction possibly insulting some murderous kami.

Betrayers of Kamigawa Player's Guide & the Kamigawa Map

I couldn't find a better scan of the cover than this one, which comes from this Ebay auction. And if you're wondering why I don't just buy a copy of the booklet and scan it myself... follow that link to check out the asking price. I think we can all agree that's too much money just to write a mini-article like this one!

This is going to be a short review. The lore in this booklet, scans of which can be found here, consists of a summary of the Outlaw novel, a few more character blurbs and part two of the Kamigawa glossary. What can I really say about that? It’s cool to showcase this information in the booklet, though I am always a bit annoyed when stuff like the backstory of Oyobi only shows up in sources as obscure as this. Other than that… well, I’ve got some continuity nitpicks? And to spice things up a little, I'll discus the Kamigawa map afterwards!

Betrayers of Kamigawa Online

The place where all the Betrayers vignettes were collected, Meet the Betrayers, has no links other than the short stories and a single FAQ about the set, unlike the Champions mini site. Which is odd, as there still were plenty of lore related posts, and even more general Betrayers of Kamigawa related feature articles on the site. Let’s take a look on what might have been included.

Heretic: Betrayers of Kamigawa

Writer - Scott McGough
Cover Art - Chris Moeller
First Printing - Januari 2005

Quick reminder: because the Kamigawa trilogy is a continuous story written by the same person I'm saving the actual review till the end of book three. This entry just contains the summary, trivia and continuity section!

SUMMARY
A few months have passed in our story. Michiko has returned to Eiganjo only to promptly be put under house arrest, and has been teaching herself kanji magic to get a message to Toshi to break her out. Lady Pearl-Ear gets exiled, and Konda, after O-Kagachi ate three of his mounted divisions last book, summons Yosei, the Morning Star to protect the castle. Meanwhile Toshi is relearning his magic following the power boost he got from the Myojin of Night's Reach. Crime lord Boss Uramon tries to recruit him to move against the soratami moving in on her territory. He refuses, and Uramon sends a bunch of thugs after him, including Kiku and Marrow-Gnawer.

What, this cute little guy?

Betrayers of Kamigawa Vignettes

Well, this needs no introduction. Just like last time, we get a bunch of vignettes on the Betrayers of Kamigawa minisite. Let’s take a look!

A Servant’s Mission, by Jay M. Salazar

Ink-Eyes is able to hear ghosts and kami, and from these voices from beyond she has received training to become the best ninja among the Nezumi. Muzan the Ogre took her in after she was cast out by her Nezumi kin and raised/trained her in the kind of horrifically abusive way we also saw with Hidetsugu and Kobo. He sends her to kill some Nezumi camped nearby to please his oni master Kuro. But at night she returns and kills Muzan instead. She then summons Kuro, who makes her his new servant, giving her new powers, including necromancy.

Champions of Kamigawa Player's Guide

Of course the top-down-ness of this set had to be sold in every way possible, so here we have the booklet that came with the Champions fatpack. Those usually contain just a quick introduction to the world or the story before moving on to talking about the coolest cards in the set and how the new mechanics work. Those introduction rarely have anything that isn’t also featured in online articles, so don’t expect me to review them for every single set going forward. But a few of them do contain interesting information, and the Kamigawa ones are certainly among that group. For those interested in checking them out, the lore related pages have been scanned and posted here.

Champions of Kamigawa Online

When we covered the Champions vignettes I linked to the Champions mini site, where you may have noticed a whole bunch of other links in addition to the short stories. Those links all go to various Feature Articles and Magic Arcanas on the main site. Not all of these are actually all that interesting from a lore perspective (Spiritual Combos just gives us some 2004 style Johnny tricks for example), but a decent number of them are. It’s a top-down set after all, you’ve got to showcase that! So let’s take a look on everything flavor and storyline related that WotC released online from the start of the Champion’s preview season to the start of that of Betrayers.  

Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa

Writer - Scott McGough
Cover Art - John Bolton
First Printing - September 2004

SUMMARY
We start with a prologue in which lady Pearl-Ear, a kitsune living at the royal court of Eiganjo delivers the daughter of daimyo Konda. When she goes to tell him, she finds him with general Takeno, headmaster Hisoka, soratami ambassador Meloku and a mysterious floating rock depicting a dragon curled in on itself, that he claims is a way to "secure the future".

We then skip to twenty years later, to a Kamigawa that has been ravaged by attacks from the spirit world. We follow the ochimusha Toshi, the titular outlaw, who uses kanji magic (as in, he draws kanji symbols to summon magical effects). He stumbles upon a bunch of soratami trying to make a deal with Marrow-Gnawer's gang of nezumi. He manages to escape, but the soratami follow him to his home to kill him. He escapes again, but sees the kanji for moon, iceberg, unstoppable and disaster or cataclysm appearing in some shadows and fallen bamboo. Wanting answers, he heads into the Sokenzan mountains to find Hidetsugu, an ogre shaman with whom he has made a blood pact called the Hyozan Reckoners. (Hyozan means iceberg. If you face one of them, you're also in trouble with those you can't see, get it?)

Champions of Kamigawa Vignettes

Let’s take our first steps into this new plane with some short stories! You can find a portal containing links to all of them here, but I’ll also include individual links below. I’ll give quick summaries for all of them, but I’d urge you to just go read them yourselves. They aren’t long, they’re free, and most of them are worth a look. Also, Magic’s short stories have a tendency towards twist endings, so those will all be spoiled if you read the reviews first.

Kamigawa Announcement

Did I really end that last review promising the next one would be up after a week or two, and then posted nothing for multiple months? How embarrassing. I don’t really have an excuse either. The world just has an annoying habit of having stuff happen (as I’m sure you’ve noticed these past few months), and between friends, family, work and other stuff the blog just always seems to be the last thing that gets incorporated into my new routine. So after the so manieth misfired attempt at a regular schedule I think I’ll just have to accept that this blog isn’t going to have one, and I’ll just put up an announcement whenever I’ve got a chunk of reviews ready.

Speaking of which… Announcement! Kamigawa reviews start this Saturday! Here’s what you can expect the coming weeks!

• September 5th - Champions of Kamigawa vignettes
• September 12th - Outlaw: Champions of Kamigawa
• September 16th - Champions online
• September 19th - Champions fatpack booklet
• September 26th - Betrayers of Kamigawa vignettes
• October 3rd - Heretic: Betrayers of Kamigawa
• October 7th - Betrayers online
• October 10th - Betrayers fatpack booklet
• October 17th - Saviors of Kamigawa vignettes
• October 21st - Guardian: Saviors of Kamigawa
• October 24th - Kamigawa trilogy review
• October 28th - Saviors online
• October 31st - Saviors fatpack booklet
• November 7th - Kamigawa block overview

You see, the first Kamigawa review was almost done when I put up the last Mirrodin one, and when I decided on this new way of doing things I first finished up all the others before doing the announcement. Couldn’t show up empty handed after all that time, could I?

As you’ve probably spotted already… this is quite a bit more stuff than a block usually gets! This is because Kamigawa is a top-down block, meaning it was made flavor-first, rather than mechanics-first, and to promote this WotC put out a lot more lore than usual, including a whole bunch of online stories. Which means more reviews, but also that I’m not going to do the usual order of looking at the books and then at the online stuff. The first of the short stories were released during spoiler season, making them the very first look at Kamigawa we ever got. So to keep things roughly chronological I’m going to cover them first for each set, then the novel second. Which does leave the articles on the rest of the online stuff fairly short, but that’s why you’ll be getting articles on the fatpack booklets (which normally don’t have anything worth talking about in them, but hey, top-down block!) in the same week.

Oh, and one more point of housekeeping: from this point on it seems Wizard’s has finally learned from Odyssey and Mirrodin block that having three different authors on your trilogy is courting trouble. So starting with Kamigawa each cycle has at least one writer working on all three books. This is great for the consistency of tone, quality and continuity, but a bit strange when it comes to writing reviews about them. When I’ve covered one book there isn’t much more to say about, for example, the writing style of the other two. So to keep me from repeating myself I’m going to cover the Kamigawa novels the same way I did Invasion novels way back when: the three reviews will just have the summary, trivia and continuity sections of the review, then in the same week as the third article I’ll also put up a review of the entire trilogy as a whole, where I will also cover the timeline stuff.

And with all that out of the way… see you Saturday for our first look at Kamigawa!

Ur-Golem's Eye (and a whole bunch of other stuff)

Once upon a time on MTGSalvation, someone brought up the fact that Mirrodin took place millennia after all other stories. In response the then head of the Creative Team Brady Dommermuth pointed out that the flavor text of Ur-Golem's Eye was an error, and that only a few centuries were supposed to have passed.

This is emblematic of what happened to the debate about the Mirrodin timeline. While there were loads of temporal references in the books and in online articles (as we've seen in the last four reviews), as time passed those became harder and harder to find, and thus the debate became focused on the most visible pieces of evidence: flavor text. Which is kinda convenient, as a single piece of those is much easier to declare an error than a whole pile of different sources.

This wouldn't be Multiverse in Review though if I just left it at that. I've dug up all those other references, so now it is time to put it all together, showcase the inconsistencies and trace the development of the Mirrodin timeline over the years. But we're also going to do something else. While trawling through forum threads for my research I kept finding interactions between Brady Dommermuth and... eh... myself. Which got me thinking about the relationship between the Creative Team and the storyline fans, and how it often wasn't great at the time. So for those interested in that sort of thing, stick around after all the timeline talk for some introspection on, well... myself around age 18.

Yeah, this was a weird one to write.

Mirrodin block online

Back when we looked at Odyssey block’s online content we had to go through quite a few sites, but over time most of those get dropped. Mirrodin didn’t have its own website like Invasion and Odyssey, and the last update on the Magic Multiverse page was just link to a description of the Mirrodin novel, nothing more. But the Magic Book Archive is still going, and Magicthegathering.com has a few feature articles and arcana posts that deal with the story or flavor.

Let’s start with the feature articles on Magicthegathering.com, as I assume those would be the most widely read source from back in the day. There is one for each of the three sets and the serve mostly as a quick introduction to the setting and to plug the books. Unfortunately for the continuity obsessives there are a few inconsistencies between these articles and the books they are trying to sell.

The Fifth Dawn

Writer - Cory J. Herndon
Cover art - Jim Murray
First release - May 2004

SUMMARY
We start in an unexpected place: with Yert, the controller of a Reaper (=Harvester) that Glissa met in The Moons of Mirrodin and who was said to have been killed in The Darksteel Eye. He’s having visions of worlds without metal and a Mirrodin without life, while someone is telling him to wake up.

We then cut to Glissa and Slobad, who are still on the edge of the new lacuna created by the birth of the green sun. They discover the magic has caused loads of mutations to the wildlife. There is some random fighting with giant wasps and rats, and then the two are captured by the Viridian elves. Turns out that since Glissa left a whole bunch of elves disappeared, most of them vanishing around the creation of the new sun. Also, Glissa’s sister Lyese is still alive, but thinks Glissa is responsible for their parents deaths. So Glissa is put on trial. She tells the assembled people about her adventures and most seem to believe her. Lyese doesn’t though and attacks her. In the scuffle the two of them and Slobad are separated from the assembly. Then aerophins attack.

The Darksteel Eye

Writer - Jess Lebow
Cover artist - Carl Critchlow
First printing - December 2003

SUMMARY
We again start with Memnarch, who has clearly gone insane since the last timewe met him. He thinks Karn is speaking to him, is completely addicted to serum, and for some reason he is turning into flesh. He sends his metal minion Malil after Glissa. Throughout the book we get chapters from Memnarch’s point of view in which he is ranting against an imaginary Karn. Through these rants we learn about the history of Mirrodin and most importantly about Memnarch’s plan: since Karn ascended when he and Urza were destroyed in the Legacy blast (back in Apocalypse), Memnarch reckons that if he and Glissa (who has an unflared spark) are destroyed by the creation of Mirrodin’s 5^th sun he will turn into a planeswalker as well… sounds like a foolproof plan to me! Anyway, he has built his fortress Panopticon in the path the final sun will take when it is born, so now all he needs is to make sure Glissa is with him at the right time.

The Moons of Mirrodin

Writer - Will McDermott
Cover artist - Brom
First printing - September 2003

SUMMARY

In the prologue Memnarch wanders around Argentum after Karn left him there as the new warden of the plane. He decides the whole thing is too mathematically perfect. Fascinated by the blinkmoths, which are the one thing Karn didn't create but imported from another plane, he decides to bring more lifeforms over. Before he can get to that he notices a weird black smudge which he wipes away, unknowingly infecting himself with a mysterious oil. He immediately decides to rename the world Mirrodin, after himself.

Chapter one starts an unknown amount of time later. We meet Glissa, an elf warrior who doesn't trust the rebuking ceremony in which the trolls of the Tangle let the elves forget painful memories. Elves get "flares" of these suppressed memories, but Glissa's are special: she gets flares in which she remembers a different world, one where all life isn't infused with metal.