The Seeker's Fall

 

Writer - Jenna Helland

Story - Jenna Helland, Brady Dommermuth and Doug Beyer

Illustrators - Trevor Hairsine, Dan Scott and Aleksi Briclot

Letterer - Jino Choi

Art Director - Jeremy Jarvis

Based on characters by Brady Dommermuth and Aleksi Briclot

Released January/February 2009

SUMMARY

It can be found here.

Part one: Tezzeret, as a poor kid who was allowed in the academy of the Seekers of Carmot because he showed promise, looses a duel against fellow student Silas Renn on examination day. A teacher wants to kick him out of the academy, but Tezzeret kills said teacher instead.

Part two: Tezz is a Seeker now, but he's still looked down upon for coming from the Tidehollow ghetto. He fights his way into the Seeker's inner sanctum to learn the secret of creating etherium, only to discover it's all a scam. He's caught and stabbed, but his spark flares and he ends up on Grixis.

Part three: Eh... he fights through a bunch of Grixis monsters before finally running into Nicol Bolas, who tells Tezz to kneel as his servant.

Timeline Comparisons, part 1

Something happening at different times on different timelines!? Oh no!

For a long time now I've thought about making my timeline a bit more legible. Maybe something with a few different columns, to make it so the Weatherlight Saga can sit in one without being interrupted by, say, the backstory of Benalia. Or perhaps just to have one column for definite dates and one for vague "approximately several centuries before..." references. But before doing such a big overhaul I want to make sure it's as complete as I can make it. Having crossed the Mending seems like a good opportunity to finish up the pre-Future Sight part (at least until we're getting another Brothers' War style flashback story of course). So I've put my timeline next to the one on the MTG Wiki (and the Sourced version on the same wiki, which is slightly different) and gone over all the differences to see what I've missed. In the proces I'll also adres a few discrepancies between our versions. Turns out there is quite a bit too talk about, so this will be the first in a series of articles. Let's start with...

...STUFF THAT DEFINETELY NEEDS TO GO ON MY TIMELINE

I've been quite thorough in my coverage of pre-Mending stories, so this article mostly just covers flashback stories that I haven't gotten to yet. The only pre-Mending things that made me go "Oh, right, I've missed that" were "The Mirari's mutating waves spread across Otaria" and "Thousands of Dominarians immigrate to Otaria." My blog covers the Magic stories rather than the sets, but with Onslaught block we had the bizarre situation that the cards told a completely different story than the novels. This stuff, as well as the Riptide Project dooming itself by reviving the slivers should probably be represented somewhere.

While covering the Alara Savor the Flavor articles we've already run into some more stuff that wasn't in any of the stories, like Progenitus waking up, and there's only going to be more of that in the future, so maybe my overhauled timeline should also display when all sets happen in general.

Conflux Online

INTRODUCING THE CONFLUX

As is usual at this point our first introduction to the new set comes through a mini site (split up in The Shards Collide, Sowing Fear, Reaping War & Claws of an Ancient Evil) and a feature article (Nicol Bolas, Planeswalker). These tell us that the shards are converging, though that can't have come as that great a surprise after the Planeswalker's Guide hinted at it... and we already knew the name of the next set was "Conflux".

A bigger reveal is that Nicol Bolas has been fermenting war all along. Some stuff he's been doing we knew, just not that he was behind it (He's the bigger power behind Malfegor and the Seekers of Carmot that the Planeswalker's Guide hinted at, and got Marisi to break the Coil), other stuff is entirely new (as we are introduced to Rakka Mar & Gwafa Hazid). It also sets up his motivation of wanting to get his powers back after the Mending, though the various Alara-era sources are a bit ambiguous if his plan would bring him back to old school planeswalker levels, merely stop him from deteriorating further, or something in between.

Also, I've been made aware that there actually was a hint about the Skyward Eye being evil before Conflux... it was just in the flavor text! Which makes it extra strange nothing about that made it into the Planeswalker's Guide!

It feels a bit odd to just be told all this, especially compared to the last time Nicol Bolas was revealed as the big bad, which came as the stinger of the second novel in a trilogy, but I guess that if you don't build things up too much the reveal can't be a let down either. We should also remember that although I reviewed it earlier, Agents of Artifice, which showed Bolas hanging around on Grixis, was released alongside Conflux, making his reveal on the mini-site more of a "Hey, this character you never expected to see again is back!", rather than a lackluster way off paying of a long hinted at return. While people at the time were certainly complaining about only getting one book for a block rather than one per set, we shouldn't compare these articles to something like the Theros: Beyond Death story being summarized in one article.

Flight of the White Cat

Writer - Brady Dommermuth

Story - Brady Dommermuth, Doug Beyer and Jenna Helland

Illustrators - Greg Staples, Rafa Garres & Dave Kendall

Letterer - Brian Dumas

Art Director - Jeremy Jarvis

Based on characters by Brady Dommermuth and Aleksi Briclot

Released October 2008

SUMMARY

It can be found here.

Part one: Jazal puts his brother Ajani on patrol, though his fellows say he's jinxed because he's albino. Humans show up to hunt Ajani and his pridemates abandon him. Jazal shows up to save him, and takes a scroll from the humans with a picture of a white, one-eyed nacatl on it.

Part two: During the festival of Marisi the shaman Zaliki sneaks into Jazal's place. Ajani follows her. She goes away with an excuse and he sees drawings of himself on the walls, wondering "brother, what have you been hiding". That night someone saying "Please forgive me" drops an artifact that summons monsters in the pride's camp. The monsters kill Jazal, which triggers Ajani's spark, sending him to Jund.

Part three: After running from Karrthus, Ajani meets Sarkhan Vol, who is revealed as the "stranger" he was telling the events of the previous two parts to in the narration. Sarkhan talks a bit about magic and revenge. In the end Ajani figures out how to planeswalk and heads back to avenge his brother.

Shards of Alara Online

Right. How am I going to do this with the current state of the Magic website? 

Well, I've gone to the Wiki, checked out the articles linked on the bottom of the Alara page and everything from the Savor the Flavor page. That should give me the initial introduction to the setting, and what stories need to be put onto the timeline, plus whatever else might turn up in the main storyline column. To actually read those articles I can look them up on MaxMakesMagic's listing of articles in the Internet Archive. All of which was enough of a pain in the back that I didn't feel like trying to track down all the Arcana's and Card of the Day entries. Maybe I'll return for those some day. Maybe. For now, let's first dive into the introduction of one of my favorite planes!

INTRODUCING FIVE NEW WORLDS

As always, we start with a handful of feature articles (Alara, a World Broken, Ripping a World Apart & A Shards Day's Night), and a Mini Site (split in various parts: Five Worlds, Life Imitates Mana, Fiends and Behemoths & Planeswalkers of Alara). I also found this reference to something called "Alara Explorer" on the Mini Site, which sounds cool, but unfortunately I can't find it anywhere.

Finally there is Planes of Existence: Alara, which is dated July 25, 2008, which is before all the other stuff. I think that's just because it got pre-dated to the launch of the (then) new version of the website though.

Also, I thought the Shard-murals were from the mini-site, but if they were I can't find those either. Maybe they were in the explore section? Thanks to this Magic art Tumblr for compiling them.

A Planeswalker's Guide to Alara

A Planeswalker's Guide to Alara

Authors - Doug Beyer, Jenna Helland

Cover Art - Raymond Swanland

First Printing - September 2008

...and a whole bunch of other people.

Review

For the past few years Wotc had been putting up bits and pieces of their style guides, which storyline fans obviously loved, leading to them asking to see the whole thing. Eventually WotC put up a poll asking if people would buy one if they could, and since everybody said they would, here we have the Planeswalker's Guide to Alara. It's not really a style guide though, as it has loads of card art rather than just design sketches, and I assume all the text is at least updated from the original style guide to fit changes made through the development proces. So it's really more of a precursor to the later artbooks rather than a true style guide.

The guide gives you a quick introduction to the setting: how Alara used to be one plane before it broke into five shards, what life is like in those shards, which people live there, occasionally some history facts, and finally an overview of the four planeswalkers from Shards of Alara. All of which should be very interesting to hardcore storyline fans, and is accompanied with illustrations from both the cards and the style guide, which always look amazing.

...maybe a bit less so due to my scanner.

Yet while the artbooks were enough of a succes to last four years and eight entries, the Planeswalker's Guide series was cancelled after just this book, with the overviews of new worlds moving back to free online content. So what happened? Well, I can think of three reasons why this series was less successful.

Agents of Artifice

Writer - Ari Marmell
Cover Artist - Aleksi Briclot
First Printing - February 2009

SUMMARY

We open with Kallist Rhoka & Liliana Vess living together (she's just turned down his offer of marriage) when a bunch of thugs attack them looking for a mister Jace Beleren. Kallist and Liliana used to be Jace's friends but are on the outs with him at the moment. Still they (well, mostly Liliana) feel they have to go warn him. They're too late though, and Jace is killed.

...and there was much rejoicing, because remember: a large chunk of the storyline community hated the new planeswalkers at this point. We're only now covering the book that made everybody like Jace!

Except of course Jace isn't dead. Killing who we think was Jace undid a memory swap spell, and we discover that the Kallist we've been following is actually Jace, and it's the real Kallist has just been killed. Shaken by the return of his memories Jace runs out into the street. Meanwhile Liliana kills the thugs... but then we learn she was in on the plot!

Yeah, kinda like that.

Before we hear what that plot is though... flashback time!