Title: Magic Lore

Date Posted: Tue Sep/04/12 at 1:17am

Kethiju

Posts: 225
Joined: 24-Jul-12

Let's see what people have picked up from playing the game, or reading in the books.

Like I've said before, I started playing in 1993, so there wasn't much in the way of a story for magic. Just that you were a planeswalker who came across another planeswalker who got into a squabble. There started to be a story when Antiquities came out. 2 brothers, Urza and Mishra were artificers. Urza had the planeswalker spark, where as Mishra did not. The brother's war was between these 2 for control of what I would assume is now Mirrodin. Following that, Ice Age was the next real story to happen. The necromancer Leshrac had somehow or another gotten control of the frozen wastes of Dominaria. The story was side tracked by Homelands, where the Serra Paladins waged war against the vampires of Sengir. This is where Ihsan and The Baron came from. Then came Mirage. We started to get an actual story flow. There were now story based reasons to keep buying magic cards. This is where Gerrard comes in. The student to Urza, they began tracking Yawgmoth.

Date Posted: Tue Sep/04/12 at 6:35am

gericault5

Posts: 2788
Joined: 13-Oct-09

Slight corrections
Urza and mishra were artifcers they were also archoligists on dominara. While investigating thran ruins they find a powertones(containing the soul of glacion) the stone breaks into the might and weak stones (reopening a long closed portal to phyerxia) each brother gets a half and then raise large armies to get the other half. At the end of the brothers war meet again and urza sees mishra has been corrupted by phyrexia. In his rage he activates an ancient weapon whos name escapes me (golgrin stylix or like that). The weapon wipes out half the continent, reseals the portal, and urzas spark ignites. Urza then begins his quest for revenge for his brother againest phyrexia
Mirroden was created by karn sometime after the fall of yawgmoth

Date Posted: Tue Sep/04/12 at 8:52am

TheCaptain

Posts: 909
Joined: 13-Apr-11

The books are actually not bad, I've enjoyed reading them personally. They fill in a lot of details, and it's really cool to see where the cards inspired the authors.

Date Posted: Tue Sep/04/12 at 9:31am

Boyachi

Posts: 1553
Joined: 02-Nov-11

Gerrard does not start tracking Yawgmoth, Gerrard starts gathering up Urza's Legacy to turn the Weatherlight (flying airship) into the Legacy Weapon. The planeswalking ship takes Gerrard to Rath, which is an artifical plane made by phyrexians. Once it got big enough, it would fill up with phyrexians and then planarly overlay with Dominara (invasion cycle). This all takes millenia, and Urza was expecting this, and he got a band of planeswalkers to storm into phyrexia, stuff happens, Gerrard ends up fighting Urza and chops off his head, Urza still lives due to Planeswalkers being so much more godlike, head gets put into Karn Yawgmoth becomes black mana, Weatherlight pulls down the Glimmermoon, since it was a white mana battery that had been generating since before Yawgmoth was a godwhatevertheheckhesclassifiedas. White meets black, Karn becomes a planeswalker with some new name, but no one gives a crap because they never use it again.
Oddysey happens in Otaria, which I thought was an Island off of mainland Dominaria much time after the invasion but apparently not considering Planechase calls it a plane. Basically, the Mirari an artifact created as a monitor by Karn, is found and it starts magically augmenting anything close to it. Kamahl the Pit Fighter finds it and tries to keep it in Krosa, but obviously this doesn't go as smoothly as we'd like. His sister, Jeska, is sorta killed and becomes Phage, the Untouchable. Then she becomes a god??? and this is the first point where we get the notion of Yawgmoth not being dead, since she meets a likeness and a plane similar to his. After all is said and done Karn takes the Mirari back and makes Mirrodin!
Mirrodin is a nicer Phyrexia. The Mirari becomes sentient as Memnarch and Slobad the goblin becomes a planeswalker and after all is said and done, Karn picks up the Mirari again.
Kamigawa comes out of the blue! The emperor steals some creation force from the kami (spirits of magic) and uses it to make things indestructible. Most of the kami get ticked off and start attacking all humans and it is up to Toshi Umezawa (descendant of Tetsuo Umezawa who fought back Nicol Bolas from taking over/destroying his plane) and the emperor's daughter to return That Which Was Taken to the spirit world before Progenitius? destroys the plane.
That's as far forward that I know. To my knowledge they really didn't use the Ice Age saga too much afterwards (not counting coldsnap) and there is are at least six books based solely on the Legends set.
Is anyone curious about the Thran? I know that backstory but I figured you guys wanted more set based stuff.
I'll say this again: Nemesis by Paul Thompson was an excellent book.

Date Posted: Tue Sep/04/12 at 2:05pm

Kethiju

Posts: 225
Joined: 24-Jul-12

Gerrard was tracking down Yawgmoth after he did whatever he did to Volrath. Apparently, and this is according to a wiki, so hit and miss, Yawgmoth is/was the "god" of the Phyrexians. Urza and Gerrard were hunting him down to save a plane. Yawgmoth corrupts both Urza and Gerrard, who fight to the death, resulting in Urza's death via decapitation. Gerrard uses Urza's Powerstone Eyes to trigger the Null Moon, but it wasn't enough to stop Yawgmoth. I'm sure I'm missing bits of info there, but they eventually "kill" Yawgmoth. There is no official dictation as to whether Yawgmoth is really dead or not. I'll look for some links to put in here.

Date Posted: Tue Sep/04/12 at 6:06pm

TheCaptain

Posts: 909
Joined: 13-Apr-11

Well, according to the book "The Thran", which is about the Thran empire and the rise of Yawgmoth, Yawgmoth was introduced to a distant plane by a Planeswalker....I forget her name, he ended up killing her. Anyways, he built a portal to this plane, and he lived at the core of it. He called the plane "Phyrexia", so he could be called the "god" of Phyrexia in a way. He was the one who turned the Thran into Phyrexians.

Date Posted: Tue Sep/04/12 at 10:47pm

Boyachi

Posts: 1553
Joined: 02-Nov-11

I could have sworn Urza's severed head had quite a few good one-liners.

Whichever moon it was, I was also rather certain that is why they made Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth.

Date Posted: Tue Sep/04/12 at 11:40pm

gericault5

Posts: 2788
Joined: 13-Oct-09

yeah decapitation weaked Urza but did not kill him, his planeswalker spark existed in the might and weak stones which made up his eyes(its actually theorized that he never had the spark at all but when the stones merged into his eyes when he ended the brothers war he inherited the soul and spark of the thran Galican, who had the spark and was imprisoned in the whole powerstone by yawgmoth) he finally died when Gerrard removed the stones from his eyes and put them in karn's chest, making the legecy weapon, essentially passing Urza's/Galican's spark and knowledge into Karn

The moon was called both the Null moon and the glimmer moon, it was orginal a control sphere used to direct the tharn's artifact soldiers, but was lauched into space to keep yawgmoth from getting control of it. it then absorbed white mana for thousands of years before the powerstone enhanced Karn channeled the mana to kill yawgmoth, who was coming into Dominara above the swamps of Urborg, which is where the rath overlay occured, which is why urborg is his tomb. The notion that he still lives is just stupid, it comes from Scourge when Karona was on a trip and supposely met yawgmoth, however, it should be noted that she also met Teferi, who claimed in time spiral never to have met her. Not to mention flavorwise it took thousands of years of planning, genetic manpulation, the moons absorbing, to stop him the first time not to mention all the items used to do it are gone, and if urza and the oldwalkers coudn't beat him, how the hell will Jace and company

Urza and Gerrard never hunted for Yawgmoth they knew exactly where he was. Ureza leads an assault on Phyrexia with other planeswalkers but fails when yawgmoth corrupts him, and Urza then joins him. Gerrard is caught by Ertai and then Crovax sends him to yawgmoth as a gift. Yawgmoth has urza fight Gerrard to test his loyality and does it by removing Urza powers, but an old man cant beat a super soldier and gerrard kicks his ass.

[Edited by gericault5 on 4/Sep/12 at 11:42PM]

Date Posted: Mon Sep/17/12 at 7:00pm

Kethiju

Posts: 225
Joined: 24-Jul-12

According to current lore, Jace is the single most powerful planeswalker in existance at this time. He just doesn't know it. Watch the opening cinematic for MTG 2013 on youtube.