#dominaria

https://pixelframe.design/magic-the-gathering-font-logo-generator/

“‘Toxic Abomination,’ was it? Hello. Please have a seat.”

The lesser Phyrexian looked around the putrid swamp for a chair. Seeing none, it collapsed into the muddy water before its praetor.

“Let’s begin your evaluation.” Sheoldred’s serpentine body coiled slowly around the grunt as she studied the surprisingly mundane clipboard in her hands. “It says here, you waited hundreds of years for Phyrexia’s return, only needing reactivation upon our arrival. Quite some loyalty, that. Also, you were once…renowned for your abnormal strength?”

Toxic Abomination nodded eagerly, bobbing its armless torso instead of a head.

“…Unfortunately, however, this strength is no longer so exceptional.”

Toxic Abomination startled at this statement.

“Yes. I’m afraid such power as yours is no longer even passable. Quite below average, in fact.”

Toxic Abomination began to rise from the muck, only for Sheoldred to make a placating gesture with her upper body.

“Please, no need to get angry. You were inactive for quite some time, now. It’s only natural to react to such news with anger. But a Phyrexian like you should conduct yourself properly.”

Defeated, Toxic Abomination collapsed back into the mud. Sheoldred watched passively as the fight left it.

“Worry not. Unlike the incompleat, we look after our own. I’m sure we could find work of some kind for you, given your service record.”

Toxic Abomination’s body angled hopefully upward. That was, until it heard Sheoldred’s suggestion, read aloud from her clipboard:

“Yes, I believe ‘chump blocker’ would be a perfect lateral position for you! If you’re interested, please speak with my assistant on your way out.”

Toxic Abomination suddenly rose and stomped out of the brackish water. During its egress, it saw a human woman with a glowing red eye standing on the shore.

“Hello. My name is Rona. I heard you might be interested in a-”

Toxic Abomination continued its indignant departure. Behind it, Rona and Sheoldred shared sly smirks.

Helm of the Host

Forged out of flowstone for the queen of Vesuva.

Not in detail, and it's been a few years since I read those books. (And I'm not reading them again for the sake of this, so it'll be drawn from memories.)

This story, for the Odyssey and Onslaught blocks, takes place, of course, on Dominaria. More specifically, on the island/continent of Otaria. Otaria's most remarkable feature had been how unremarkable it was, so much so maps and stories before that point on Dominaria had forgotten to mention it existed. It takes place some time after the Nth Phyrexian Invasion of Dominaria, the big one that got an entire block named Invasion. Due to being out of the way of most plot-relevant things, Otaria survived the Invasion better than most places. These blocks take place a few decades after the Invasion ended.

One of the most influential organization of the continent was the Cabal, led by its Patriarch. Valuing ambition and greed and worshipping a being known as Kuberr, the Cabal embodied its mono-black ideals very well. One of their most public and profitable ventures were the Pit Fights. Exactly what they sound like. Fights, both physical and magical, to entertain a paying audience, with some trinkets as rewards for the champions of course.

(Not really important to the main plot, but the Cabal's most specialist mages were known as Dementia Casters, and they're pretty cool. Basically, they magically went into their own mindspace to fight and defeat their own worst nightmares. If they managed to do so, they gained control of them and could summon them into reality to fight for them. If they didn't succeed, well. There's a reason they were called Dementia casters. The ones that survived, anyway. Also one of them figured out how to double jump.)

It's on Otaria that one Kamahl joins the pit fights, and through his skills earns a shiny bauble called the Mirari that was just lying haphazardly in the Cabal's treasure pile. The Mirari would end up going through a few hands, but after it was activated, it has a few properties. Pretty much anyone who sees it and can do magic wants it, and it greatly amplifies the existing magic of whoever holds it. It also tends to go well beyond what its wielders want when it comes to using that power, while goading them to go farther and farther. It's kinda like the One Ring, except more of an overeager puppy with a nuclear arsenal than an embodiment of evil. Want some order? Okay, let's start turning everyone in this city into crystal statues and go from there! Want to light up your campfire? Okay, let's burn this forest to the ground, that should be warm enough! A merfolk wielder a bit dehydrated while crossing a desert? Would you prefer a year of unceasing rain over the entire desert or a tsunami so big it reaches all the way inland?

Kamahl overall resists this temptation better than everyone else we see. He gets rid of the Mirari a couple times and then goes to get it back, he even changes color over it at some point. Better isn't well though, and while he has it, at some point he uses his sword (according to its seller, 100% genuinely forged from one Urza Planeswalker's staff!) with the Mirari embedded into it to stab his sister Jeska.

Jeska is half-dead for a while with her new magical wound, up until at some point she falls into the hands of the Cabal. The Patriarch takes a direct interest in her. Especially once she survives a touch from him, which is lethal to anything that lives. Some sort of Death-touch.) She comes out of that transformed, and is given a new name and identity by the Cabal. She is reborn as their champion in the Pits, the undefeatable Phage, whose mere touch rots living flesh. And needs special apparatus to be able to eat anything so it doesn't rot before even landing in her stomach.

Finally, after this much exposition, we get to the part you asked about. It's during Phage's reign of the pit fights that she ends up pitted (ah!) against a couple of fighters. That are also a couple. A summoner named Nivea and an illusionist named Ixidor. They work well together, but it isn't enough. Nivea's summons fall apart at a mere glance from Phage. and soon, the same fate befalls Nivea. A touch, and she dies.

Ixidor is left alone and grieving. An illusionist by himself isn't nearly as effective as one that can use his illusions to allow an ally that can actually do damage to maneuver. Unable to hold his own and in no state of mind to try, Ixidor ends up deep enough in debt he gets exiled into a desert to die.

Famished and exiled, thirsty and desperate, grieving and beaten, Ixidor yet clung to life. But he has no resources, and all his magic can offer him are illusions, taunting him with what he cannot have. It's not like you can eat or drink an illusion. So there he is, dying and alone with his dreams. Torturing himself with desperate images of creatures to eat and an oasis to drink. His mind fades fast, and soon he starts having delusions of himself actually interacting with them. A creature wounding him. The water refreshing him. Either he's went mad, or his magic's creations have come to life, to reality. Turns out, it's a lot of column A, and a lot of column B.

Ixidor, who suddenly finds himself able to make his dreams and mirages reality, is more and more certain he isn't just imagining all this as he keeps on not dying of thirst and hunger. He creates himself a fortress, a place of his own. Populates it with dreams and nightmares. His own, for the most part. He also creates as defense what he calls "unmen" out of his own shadow, people that are basically just living 2-dimensional portals that are emergency escape routes for him and follow him around. Two of them, who dub themselves Sash and Waistcoat, would eventually refuse to do their job and die in the process. They'd end up banished and go on all kinds of adventures seeking to become Real People. And eventually end up succeeding, then be turned into insects.

In a particularly vivid dream, his love, Nivea, saves him, and when he comes awake, he finds he created in his sleep an angel with her face. He loses his right arm in the process, his own flesh having been used to give the angel a grounding and independence. The angel of protection is named Akroma. And Ixidor immediately ignores the "of Protection" part of that and sends her to avenge Nivea by hunting down and killing Phage.

The angel swoops down onto a cabal pit fight between Phage and none other than Kamahl, trying to reclaim his sister from this new persona of hers. She attacks without much preamble. She fails spectacularly and is defeated in very uncertain terms. In this fight, she loses both her legs to Phage's touch, and flies back in retreat to Ixidor.

Ixidor fixes her up right quick. By merging her with a jaguar, giving her a four-legged jaguar lower body, and permanently turning her into an angel-jaguar centaur kinda thing. This is how she is anytime past her very first mission, for the remaining book and a half of her life (out of two books total). It is not reflected in ANY card art. At that point, the author had long stopped caring about what's in the card set. The closest we come to seeing it referenced is in the commander legends, but even then it's with armored legs. Two of them, not four. Also Ixidor is never represented with only one arm, even though he loses his right arm to make Akroma pretty quickly.

Anyway, Ixidor creates minds to pilot golems made of mud (that he dubs, I kid you not, "putty people". Which is used in all seriousness in the context of a Very dramatic war.) Ixidor's fortress gets attacked by Kamahl and Phage and the Cabal, he goes mad(der) Phage gives birth to a thousand giant Wurms (don't ask), Ixidor gets swallowed by one of those and makes himself a home inside a kilometer-long wurm's stomach inside a shoebox. There are reasons for me not to want to read these books again.

Akroma takes over Ixidor's fortress and creations. She uses the mind sprites animating the mud golems to read minds across the entire continents, brainwash some and gather a following to the cult of Ixidor, levying an army and a people. She also makes a detour through the shoebox at some point and finds Ixidor happy to be living in a wurm, so she leaves him there for a bit.

Meanwhile, Phage is also raising an army, and also having a kid with the Cabal patriarch that's supposed to be the reincarnation of their demon god. They end up meeting in the one city that doesn't want to join either of them, ready for war. Also the city is alive and the reincarnation of an ancient wizard demigod that's dubiously canon because the author made it up for fun and it has been acknowledged once in the twenty five years since as a "myth". So is Phage's rapidly-aging kid and Ixidor in his shoebox and wurm. Also Zagorka is in charge in that city that's also alive. She and her ass have been occasional characters trying to survive the chaos in the past couple books.

Kamahl shows up with a Special Magic Axe that the book is very very very insistent to show you uses green and black mana in a very unsubtle scene with Kamahl and the Patriarch. Anyway, he uses that axe to kill three women in one swing, which is impressive AND incredibly impractical, grabbing Akroma, Zagorka and Phage along the way. This ends up creating Karona, the three reborn as one, who goes around doing more brainwashing, a pudding orgy or two, turning Sash and Waistcoat into real people and then into insects, then goes off through the Multiverse to talk to Yawgmoth's ghost and Teferi and a whole host of other things canon hasn't acknowledged and strayed very far from since. Karona also siphons all the magic from Dominaria.

Also there is that whole three reincarnated wizard demigod thing going on who are running around from shoebox to giant teddy bears to try to end and/or fulfill a prophecy. This is as dubiously canon as the wizards themselves. Also you'll notice I stopped putting card images between these paragraphs because none of that appears anywhere on the cards. And Zagorka only got a card at all 25 years later.

Eventually, Kamahl stabs her with the Mirari sword, and it's the second time he's done that with his sister, who survived! Akroma and Zagorka though, they're just gone and nobody cares. Jeska is reborn for the third time, as a planeswalker this time! After SIX BOOKS of being in the background or not herself, she's finally the main show, no longer in the shadow of her brother! She goes off with Karn (who showed up to recover the Mirari and try to fix some of this mess) to learn how to be a planeswalker with him, and it's the end of the book. But NEXT TIME she shows up, surely, she'll have the spotlight.

(Next time she shows up is in time spiral block, where she's the plot B for one of the three books, running around and finally sacrificing herself to seal the Karona rift)

On the actual cards in the block, we can see the various creature types/classes mutating under the spreading influence of the Mirari after Kamahl stashed it away. Humans mutating into beings of slime, or of pure light. Soldiers that can only express themselves through their weapons. Elves that grow into wooden monstrosities. Also the riptide project having resurrected Slivers from extinction! They swarmed from the island and are now threatening all of Otaria! They finally get merged into a single Sliver Overlord, the end of Evolution!

Of course, none of that gets mentioned in any of these books. It simply isn't happening. The author had no idea what kind of narrative was in the card sets, and the card designers had negative one clues about what was going on in the chaos of the novels. They had a few character names in common and colors to go with them and that's about it.

And this is just a summary trying to focus on a couple characters.

Song of Freyalise

Mesa Unicorn (Dominaria) - Winona Nelson

Here’s our MTGinktober for “Sweep,“ starring Amalia Benavides Aguirre. ¡Oye, you vatos are really starting to miff me off, wey!

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

More MTGinktober here.

Daily art updates on Instagram and Twitter and Bluesky.