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.

Rath block wrap-up & continuity overview.

Up to now I've looked at all the parts of Rath block individually. Now it is time to take a step back and look at the big picture. Al the various media outlets were meant to go hand in hand, each focusing on a different aspect of the story but creating a bigger picture when all taken together. So how did that work out? Does the story hold up? Do we like this format, and what can Wizards learn from Tempest block now we are returning to a similar set up? Can we make sense of the continuity between all these versions, and will I finally update the timeline? Lot's of things to do, so let's go and look at all of Rath block in one go!

Sort off.

Born to Greatness

Part one: Born to Greatness
Part two: The Beckoning Sky
Part three: Never to be Free
Written by J. Robert King
Appeared in The Duelist #29, 32 & 34.

SUMMARY
We start on a dark night, with a twelve year old Crovax reading a book about his favorite hero: Lord Windgrace. Suddenly he hears singing coming from his dad's parlor. He's not only forbidden from entering there, but it is said to be haunted by a ghostly hag. With his head still full of adventure stories he goes in anyway, and discovers an amulet. When he picks it up Selenia appears, who says she has to obey the owner of the amulet. A random comment from the young boy makes the angel smile, and that smile seems to be enough to get him to fall in love with her. Being a kid he first tries to command Selenia to be happy, but she tells him she can't be truly happy until she is free. Crovax immediately tries to find something hard to break the amulet, but stops when he sees the bust of his father. He vows instead to free her when he is a man and can stand up to his father.

The Art of Magic the Gathering: The Rath Cycle

As this is one of the few books I do not have in my personal collection, let me start by giving many thanks to reader, commenter and occasional spellchecker Leonardo for providing me with the opportunity to do this review!

REVIEW
I've been doing this blog for little over a year now, and looking back I see that I've deviated a lot from my original planning. Partially for fun reasons, like people lending me books or magazines I do not own, allowing me to review them anyway. Other times it was just real life getting in the way, leading to delays. It really annoys me when that happens, but it turns out some good did come from it, as I am now writing my reviews of the Rath stories around the time Battle for Zendikar block is current. Reviews the first block that told the story through the cards, kicked of an ongoing storyline and came with an art book, while Wizards has just returned to showing the story in the cards, kicks of their new ongoing storyline and released their second art book? (Even called "The Art of Magic the Gathering: Zendikar", as if it is part of a series alongside the work I'm looking at today!) It's all very serendipitous, and you can certainly expect a comparison between the two blocks in my Rath block wrap-up article!

So, let's make this review a little more topical and put it side by side Magic's newest publication. They both have gorgeous art and plenty of lore tidbits, and are each well worth your time. Zendikar gives more space to exploring the plane, while Rath Cycle gives more attention to the characters, which is to be expected. Currently we are just coming of a years long stretch in which worldbuilding was the primary job of the creative team, so obviously they'd want to show of the world. Plus the Weatherlight has a literal boatload of characters while the Gatewatch, so far, only has four. I think Rath Cycle is my favorite of the two, partially because of nostalgia, and partially because it makes extensive use of sketches and paintings from the style guide and comes with some interesting behind the scenes information from the designers. Zendikar only has a handful of arts not taken from the cards and is written much more from an in universe viewpoint. The downside of Rath Cycle is that it keeps a lot of backstory deliberately mysterious, saving it for future stories, whereas Zendikar goes into great detail on the backstory of the plane, the Eldrazi, the planeswalkers and the current story. It almost feels like an encyclopedia of the Zendikar story, whereas Rath Cycle is much more of a companion piece to all the other media outlets that the Weatherlight story appeared in.

And... what more is there to say? The art is beautiful, as you would expect of a Magic the Gathering product, and that alone is enough to make me want to track down the book anyway, despite no longer needing it for my project. Lorewise it is not essential, but does contain a number of interesting facts that I will cover below.

Rath and Storm

SUMMARY
The structure of this book is unique in the Magic canon. Technically it is, as the cover states, an anthology, with each individual story focusing on a different character and written by a different author. However, unlike all Magic's other anthologies, the stories together make up one big one covering the entirety of the Weatherlight's adventures on Rath. Everything is tied together with a framing sequence of a young boy called Ilcaster being told the saga by an old librarian, somewhere in the future. In these sequences the librarian also summarizes a bunch of stuff that was already covered in other versions of the story, like the flashbacks from Gerrard's Quest, or Starke re-joining the ship from Maelstrom.

Previously when I reviewed anthologies I discussed all of the stories separately. Here however, there is not much difference in the style of the stories. With everyone striving for pretty much the same tone and working from the same plot outline the individual quirks and favored tropes of the authors are not very noticeable. So this time I'll mostly just summarize the stories, before doing an overall review at the end.

Obviously we have already seen most of the plot here in the summary of Weatherlight and the storyboards of Tempest block in The Duelist (Here, here, here and here) and in Gerrard's Quest, but there's actually a lot added here, so it's worth taking a closer look.

Gerrard's Tale, by Michael Ryan
(At least, he's credited as that at the start of the story. In the blurb about him at the start he's called Michael G. Ryan, and in the list of authors at the back only as Mike Ryan.)

We already saw mister Ryan chronicle how Gerrard rejoined the crew in Torrent, but here he gets to do so again. This time we learn that Gerrard was training soldiers of the Benalish army, but that a guild of assassins was hiring his students out from under him. When Tahngarth tells him of Sisay's capture, he first has the minotaur help him solve this problem. In the end the master assassin is arrested and Gerrard gives the corrupt general that helped the assassins the opportunity to save his honor by committing suicide.

Gerrard's friend Pol Cordel is missing from this story, but contrary to what I remembered when I reviewed Torrent, the hourglass pendant does actually show up. Gerrard leaves it somewhere before leaving Benalia. That happens off screen, so the scenes with Pol could still have happened between the lines. Unfortunately that still leaves us with two contradictory scenes of how Gerrard and Tahngarth met. Here the minotaur turns up at his work, rather than Gerrard finding him about to clobber an annoying missionary.