#arega

(For anyone unaware of original Ravnica block, Cytoplasm was a blue-green goo that could be grafted to anyone and replicate the function of pretty much any body part or organ, better in some cases. It was used as replacement for missing limbs and organs, or augmentations.

Then the leader of the Simic at the time, Momir Vig, called it all back as part of a megalomaniacal plan, fusing it all back into Kraj having "learned" connected to so many people's nervous systems, in an attempt to make the perfect being, killing or injuring thousands if not millions that relied on those cytoplasms. When Zegana rebuilt the guild, cytoplasms were banned and forbidden across the board.)

After growing fond of the little changeling, and trying to understand it and where it came from better (and maybe for other reasons she was more ashamed of later), Jova eventually decided to try to "improve" the changeling's cognition with a cytoplastic augment.

This... Went wrong. While the changeling eventually somewhat stabilized, it was incapable of supporting the cytoplast by itself. Jova saved it by putting it in a Simic nourishing pod that would keep it alive (and sedated, until she figured something else out.)

Her eventual solution was to take advantage of the network of aligned cytoplasms with the one in the changeling's body. In theory, if she lined up artificial bodies with ones connected to it, and with some extra modifications, the changeling would be able to inhabit those different bodies and use them as their own, even when their original one was stuck in that pod.

And it worked! The first body she connected it to was one of her first wholly artificial Guardian designs, one intended (eventually) for reconnaissance and infiltration. It wasn't fully matured yet (and certainly not "aware" in any way. When they first opened their Guardian eyes, they had no memory of their life as a changeling or anything before then.

Jova adopted the young Guardian as a pupil and child, named them Arega, and raised them for a few years. While she kept secret their origins and original body from them, she did teach them about how they worked, cytoplasms, and how that had to stay a secret. To help with that, Jova and Arega intentionally reported inefficient or bad numbers to the Guardian Project, so that Arega's design would be considered a failure and not explored in too much detail.

Arega learned incredibly fast and well, likely partly because of their previous life. Less than four years after Jova took them in, they had most of an education and were capable of assisting Jova with bio projects. But they might not have been fully emotionally mature yet.

Jova died. A lab accident with a Krasis that escaped, nothing to do with Arega. It did bury Jova's lab under it, and with it the pod in which Arega's original body was stored. Arega panicked. Beyond the grief they felt, they'd now be put in the care of another Simic scientist, they were technically property of the guild. Ravnica's laws can be fucked up.

Their "solution" was to pretend Jova didn't die. They quickly cloned a body of Jova laced with cytoplasts for them to control, and "Jova" claimed she was just injured and disoriented in the accident. It was to only be temporary while Arega signed their own emancipation papers, but "just one more day" turned into a number of years, almost having their dead mom back.

This is where Arega was at when they were first created as a character! The starting point. I did warn it'd be a bit of a hike.

During those years, Arega matured a bit and learned even more. Appearing as a human by day did give them a different perspective on things. But the next big development would happen during the one day War of the Spark.

"Jova" died. Unbeknownst to them, Arega was a planeswalker, since the changeling sparked so long ago, and an Eternal tracked the echo of that spark into Jova's body and tried to rip it out. It didn't work, it was just a proxy, but it did destroy the body, and sent Arega in a renewed bout of grief and anger.

They take revenge on a few Eternals in a more combat-focused body, before being approached by another planeswalker. With her help, Arega follows the exposed connection to their spark to the ruins of Jova's old lab (still not cleared out, the Gruul have been keeping construction crews busy and simic labs tend to have long quarantines when they fall.)

There, they discover their original body, and with some help over the next few days, they piece together most of what happened to them. Sadly they aren't the only one to notice everything, and the rest of the Simic finally catches on to their shenanigans. And they didn't like them.

While the specifics remained a secret from most of the Combine (and Ravnica at large), the Speakers, the guild's leadership, debated on what to do with this deceitful creature. Worries about them becoming (or already being) a new Kraj were raised. Zegana championed the side of being careful in those debates, having seen the results of the last Kraj, to put Arega in stasis and remove the cytoplasm from them. Safely if possible, but the chances of that being an option seemed low.

On the other side of the debate, Vannifar was more opportunistic. Not really in defense of Arega, but they turned out to be a planeswalker. War of the Spark made their existence public on Ravnica and heightened the interests of the Guilds in other planes, both as threats and opportunities. Any planeswalker affiliated to the guild was a very precious asset, worth taking some risks for. With Vannifar as Prime Speaker, this side won out at the time. Arega would be monitored and precautions would be taken, but they'd be allowed to remain alive and active, working for the guild.

For the next few years, they'd work at studying other planes and their unique ecosystems and forms of life for the Simic, a few weeks to a few months at a time. There were a number of planes visited: Ikoria, Eldraine, Zendikar, Geonne, Ixalan and more...

Which brings to the forefront the specifics of Arega's planeswalking. While they most of the time defaulted to their Guardian body (and it's in fact the one they recognized as themselves), they didn't think they could planeswalk with it without severing the connection to their original body, essentially killing the Guardian. Their original body was the only one they could planeswalk with, along with some life-supporting technology to set up on the other world on arrival. They'd then set up a covert lab on site while they performed their work, coming back to Ravnica regularly for reports.

Which is also one of the major precautions the Combine had against Arega. While on Ravnica, their original body stayed within armed Simic guard. While in their original body, their Guardian one was kept secured and hostage in the same way.

During that time, a team was put in charge of studying how Arega's connection worked, and determined a few things. First, extracting the cytoplasm from the changeling was impossible without destroying who Arega was pretty much completely. And second, potential ways to affect them with access to an active part of the cytoplastic network, a body they'd currently be using.

Despite the situation, with them being kept partly hostage, Arega still loved the Simic, their ideals and understood the fear that motivated them against the cytoplastic creature. They were happy to help, even if the situation was worrying at times. Of course, they could have planeswalked away during their work at any time, but it would mean abandoning their "real" body. Not that they wanted to anyway. But their mission on Eldraine marked a turning point.

On Eldraine, they set up and worked in the Wilds. They first welcomed Arega, a shapeshifter, a changeling, recognizing it as kindred. But they were also a scientist. Trying to measure, quantify, define. That was antithetical to the chaotic nature of the Wilds, and Arega's experiments never produced any results, certainly not replicable ones.

To put it simply, months of work on Eldraine produced pretty much nothing of worth to report. The reprimands that came next (and a few conversations on Eldraine) did make Arega realize fully the situation they were in, though. Kept hostage, made to work, a disappointment or change of regime away from being deemed too much of a risk and killed. They may have understood why the Combine felt like it had to act like that, but that doesn't mean they thought they should, it went against most of the guild's ideals Arega believed in.

It's after this long work on Eldraine that they started seriously thinking about possibilities to get out of the situation they were in. Most of them ranged from stupid to suicidal, or would have required them leaving their body behind. They did consider leaving it behind, maybe make a new one for themself, but this was a no-go. This body of theirs represented too much for them, mainly as how Jova knew them. Made them.

In those years, that Guardian body also finally pupated into full physical maturity, and while that came with a few changes, most of them didn't help their escape plans much. The planning in general ended up less important than an opportunity that presented itself to them, and they felt like they had to seize: The Phyrexian Invasion!

In the chaos of the Invasion, Arega finalized a risky idea, but a possible one. With the guard over their original body lightened by the war effort (and Arega's general compliance over the years), they took advantage of it to sneak and sedate their way into the complex, steal themselves, and try to planeswalk at once with both their bodies through the openings of other worlds created by Realmbreaker.

It worked! Not without hitch, but they were free. And back on Eldraine, dealing with its own Invasion. They hid in the Wilds, settling and removing the various contingencies the guild had left in their bodies in case of their escape, not wanting to test their luck on whether they'd work across planes.

Hidden back in their field lab, and soon after they settled, it wasn't a Simic affliction that got them. The Wicked Slumber spread, and while it would take months to affect most of Eldraine, Arega was a stranger to the plane, one of the targets for it. Only a couple days after they arrived, they fell to the Slumber until Kellan finally lifted it, months later.

Upon understanding what happened, they were very worried. Any headstart they might have had on people the Simic would have sent after them was long gone. And they couldn't really planeswalk away anymore, so they were stuck on Eldraine for the time being. Of course, exploring and discussing, they learned about Omenpaths, both a relief and a source of concern. This meant that the Combine didn't have to hire planeswalkers to chase them, any agents would do, but it also meant Arega had ways off-plane if they wanted. They set off in search for a way for them to planeswalk more reliably, as a way to be able to evade any pursuers.

(Of course, nobody was actually on Arega's trail. While a few Simic contacts or planeswalkers may have been told to keep an eye out, after the Invasion, the Simic's resources were strained way too thin on rebuilding and gaining back trust. Arega was on another world, and another world's concern, a secondary one for the guild for the time being. And leadership had learned to know the changeling a bit better by then, and thought they were at relatively low risk in the short term. Probably. If whatever plane they ended up on could handle a phyrexian invasion, it could probably handle a rogue Arega)

Arega finally found something that could potentially help them on the plane of Geonne. A local ritual to magically fuse together two organisms, for better survival. It took them a while to study the phenomenon and build confidence, both that it could work in their case and probably wouldn't kill them. But when they finally tried it, it worked, mostly without hitch!

They combined together their Guardian body and their original body (well, with its cytoplasts), into something mostly resembling the former externally (as the changeling body wasn't able to survive on its own exposed to the world already). Their internal biology is probably somewhat closer to changeling? They do not understand it, or what they are now. They can still inhabit other bodies, but they're more interested in experimenting with this one for now. A new form of life is something to be explored and researched!

Their new body appears to slowly shapeshift to adapt to tasks and environments it is put in, which is fascinating to them. Able to planeswalk, confident they can escape capture and eager to rediscover themselves, that's roughly where they are at nowadays!

Reality Rating: 1 (Jaspar can and does occasionally summon echoes as mounts, but wouldn't be interested in a race, nor would these echoes be very suited to one)

Jaspar can bring forth echoes of animals from parts of them, and he's been known to use antlers in the past. While those echoes are temporary until the life left in them is consumed by the magic, they can be pretty versatile, and it's not difficult to imagine Jaspar switching to a few different echoes along the length of the race. That is, if he cared any about all that. Or if they were fast enough to compete, they're mostly as fast as the animals they're summoned from the echoes of. Though they are tireless as long as they last.

Ranek

Reality Rating: 2 (I'm sure Ranek has built an extension to the Stormplate for speed at some point over the last couple centuries. And if he's not, he might if he heard of the race, could get there and thought it a fitting test. He did not actually participate in the race.)

Ranek already has his Stormplate, which is closer to a mech suit than a typical suit of armor. Given his tendency to create magical wonders, the Stormframe Sprinter is an extension to it built for speed and maneuverability. Likely able to shift the bipedal gait to a more effective quadrupedal one for bursts of acceleration. It would be a fearsome contestant in any race it entered, leaping to speeds on par with wheeled vehicles on the road but able of much more agility in rough terrain.

Ranek, who is fond of occasions to prove himself, might even have joined the Grand Prix... But he's currently desparked, mostly retired, and living back home on Kaldheim. He might not have heard of the race, or not in time, or maybe he simply didn't have a ready Omenpath to join it, or lacked a team... Whatever the reasons, he didn't show up for the event.

Jibea

Reality Rating: 0 (Any tech Jibea might have to help their gravity magic would be wearable, not a vehicle, this tech doesn't exist on their home plane anyway, and they'd be unlikely to want to participate in the Grand Prix, even if they might watch it)

A Gravity Slider is designed to help you maneuver while in freefall, and survive any collision or landing. Maximize and minimize terminal velocity both depending on what you want at any given moment. The idea is to redirect gravity into whatever direction you want to go and simply fall towards your objective. Different parts are also designed to minimize or maximize contact friction with any object that passes by (typically the ground). Using the mass of a plane and gravity as its propellant, no fuel is required besides the magic that shifts those forces, that usually comes from the pilot. Something Jibea would very much be able to do, along with using their magic to mess with nearby contestants (or their weaponry) that are NOT made to handle shifting gravity fields.

With that said, as was mentioned in the Reality Rating, this kind of tech doesn't exist on Jibea's home plane, and they certainly didn't have it custom made elsewhere either. They're not really a racer, and there isn't much of a point to participate in those races for them, so it remains very much in AU territory. They do value the display of it and of all these different techniques and technologies and have followed the Grand Prix when possible. They were keeping an eye on the Endriders in particular, sharing some of their plights.

Madaya

Reality Rating: 1 (The Mirage Machine may have existed, though it wasn't a racing Vehicle, and would have likely been sold off at some point. And Madaya isn't a racer)

Back in the days where she was a magician (as in, a stage magician), Madaya may have bought or commissioned the mirage machine from one of the many ambitious inventors on Avishkar. Both something to store her equipment and something capable of projecting room-spanning illusions for her to integrate into some of her more involved spectacles. Sadly, times became rough, she might have had to live off of her mirage machine for a bit, then when the situation became untenable, she likely had to sell it off years ago, before she hit rock bottom and sparked.