#avishkar

yknow what, screw it. avishkari miku.

Okay, so, i have a question about a specific guy.

Who's baral, and what does he have against chandra?

This is a question based off of the "impeccable timing" flavor text "when baral constructed his trap for chandra he did not account for the arrival of an enormous leonin wielding a twin headed axe"

If you want to read the story of why Baral hates Chandra so much as more than a summary, here is the entire original story from 2015.

Baral is this guy, an officer and enforcer for the Consulate, which at the time was the government in Chandra's birth city/country of Ghirapur. All this happens on the world of Avishkar (which at the time was named Kaladesh, they renamed it in-universe to mark a change of government and philosophy, and out-of-universe because the original name had unintended meanings and significance that was offensive. I will refer to it as Avishkar as we go along, but the old name wasn't retconned or anything, it still existed in the lore.)

Avishkar, inspired in aesthetics by real-world India, is a world of artifice, of inventions and wonderful machines that run on distilled Aether as fuel. Most notably, at the time of the Consulate, spellcasting was banned there, wizards and mages illegal. It was considered both dangerous and a source of chaos. The more destructive the magic, the worse it was. Baral, a wizard himself specializing in countermagic to stop other mage's magic from working, had the task of hunting down and imprisoning other mages. How much of that is his job and how much of it is his personal conviction is left up to the reader, but he's ready to bend plenty of rules to get mages off the streets.

Enter Chandra Nalaar, a teenager (I believe she was twelve at the time) with an innate knack for fire magic, a fairly destructive kind. After she gets noticed, Baral starts hunting her and her family down. They flee to a village, Baral follows with soldiers. They burn the village down and blame Chandra for it. She sees them kill her father, Kiran Nalaar, and burn the house her mother, Pia Nalaar, was in.

Chandra is brought back to Ghirapur to account for her "crimes" and this 12-year old is scheduled to be executed by Baral himself. Right before her execution, the cocktail of Chandra's desperation, grief and anger is enough to ignite her planeswalker spark, whisking her off to another world and allowing her to travel between them. As a pyromancer, her spark ignition is more literal than most.

Notice Baral on the right. Baral would survive this, but the fire would permanently disfigure him. It would lead to him always having this metal mask we see on him in public to try and hide it. Chandra would go on to learn more about pyromancy on an Abbey by the name of Kheral Keep on another world, Regatha, dedicated to it. She would never to return to Avishkar.

Until, that is, another planeswalker working for the Consulate asks a group she's a part of to help keep a Great Inventor's Fair in Ghirapur safe. A lot happens in that story (it was the main focus for half a year) but among other things Chandra returns home. Finds out that her mom is not only alive, but leading a rebellion against the Consulate. (Coincidentally, what Chandra and her friends were hired as security against.)

Baral is sent out against Chandra once again (mostly to distract her). He traps her and some of her friends, which is where Impeccable Timing happens, and they then have a Big Emotional Fight. It's a good story.

By the end of Aether Revolt, Baral is imprisoned in the very cells he used to fill, the Consulate is reformed (and would eventually fall), a new order emerges. The plane eventually gets renamed from Kaladesh to Avishkar. Very eventually, Baral would be freed in an emergency to help fight off invaders from another world. But we don't have too many details of what was happening on Avishkar specifically at that time.

“Let go of my-”

Aatchik was thrown violently from the driver’s seat. She began tumbling down the road, but quickly regained her footing thanks to several insectoid arms. Before she could skitter back toward the crash, however, a calm voice to her side interrupted her once more:

“I wouldn’t risk it,” drawled a fisherman, sitting on the track wall and holding his pole over the side. “That one’s practically a dragon, what with how fierce it guards its hoard.”

Aatchik did not turn. Her many-eyed gaze remained entirely fixed on the massive serpent pulling her vehicle off the track. “Nevertheless, I must try,” came her harsh, chittering reply. “Us Speedbrood’s vehicles are…us! Fellow insects, transcended to a higher form!”

“Well, to that thing, they’re just more stuff to collect. See?”

Hissing and spitting acid, but moving all the same, Aatchik’s vehicle finally disappeared beneath the surf under the track. The driver herself reacted much the same as her ride, angry spittle sizzling upon the pavement.

“How dare that snake! Singling us out!”

“No, it’s definitely not picky,” chimed the fisherman. “It’s already snagged plenty of other folks’ rides, if that’s any consolation?”

“…It does provide some catharsis, I must admit. But still! This is a most grievous…How many others?”

The fisherman shrugged. “No idea. But it’s roamed these waters for nine long years, and pulled quite a few under during that time.”

“It’s not a placed obstacle?”

“No way, all natural…Huh?”

Aatchik’s eyes began to sparkle. Her anger forgotten, she now leaned over the side and stared eagerly into the water.

“One of the most dignified ends I’ve ever seen for one of us,” Aatchik muttered. “No slow decline. No contrived sabotage. Just…an ending. To join so many other vehicles, what an honor. And, and, to rest as one! Forever!”

“Right…forever…”

The fisherman moved to stand in front of his bag. The scrap metal he had fished from the water bore markings from myriad vehicles, from many years past.

Here’s our MTGinktober for “Inferno,“ starring starring Chandra, Awakened Inferno. This is fine.

Click this post’s Source link for this piece’s Making-Of.

More MTGinktober here.

Daily art updates on Instagram and Twitter and Bluesky.

Hope everyone is able to come and check out the plane! Make sure to try some Gulab jamun if you get the chance by visiting, it's one of my favorite treats!

Check the first one out!

And some information about the renaming of Kaladesh to Avishkar: