#karador

Karador, male, from Magic The Gathering!

Jarad had had a rough couple of months. 

He was no longer the Golgari guildmaster after having been usurped by a giant toad referred to as The Gitrog (”mind control magic is bullshit” he mumbled to himself) and the Swarm had since been embroiled in a war with a Kaladeshi crime lord by the name of Gonti and a ghost centaur called Karador. Jarad was at a loss for how an overgrown frog upset so many dead people, but he pulled it off. 

The lich lord put these thoughts aside and focused. One month prior, Jarad had been delving into the furthest reaches of Golgari territory when he had come upon something. Something huge, encased in ice and bound in hundreds of magical chains. There was an inscription carved in the ice that read “Marit Lage lies dreaming, not dead. When will she awake from her icy prison?” Jarad had spent the last month devising and executing this plan and now it was all going to come to fruition. he had determined that there was no way in hell he was letting Marit Lage out. Too much mana would have to be invested and it was likely uncontrollable once it was free. No, he had a better plan. 

Jarad met with Gonti and Karador in the center of the arena known as the Thespian’s Stage. They began discussions of peace talks when Jarad gave the signal. Center stage opened up and out rose “Marit Lage”, which was actually just the reanimated corpses of some actors standing on each other’s shoulders and covered by a giant black sheet. This did not fool Jarad’s opponents, as all they did was laugh. 

Jarad let their laughter fuel his anger as he absorbed the mana imbued in the Stage and channeled it into the fake Marit Lage. Through the magic of theater, Marit Lage materialized, towering over the three warlords.

“Jarad, stop! You know not the forces you attempt to control!” screamed Karador. But Jarad knew exactly what he was doing. Imbuing Marit with the Strength of Cedars from the land itself, Jarad watched as the theater began to fall apart around the growing monstrosity. Gonti and Karador began to flee.

“NO!” shouted Jarad. “You shall not leave this plane alive!” Jarad generated the last bit of mana he needed to access his death magic and cast the final spell upon Marit Lage, causing the beast’s very life force to burst outward. Jarad watched with a malicious grin as his adversaries, and everything within a square mile, was vaporized entirely. 

***

“And that is why I believe the theater district is vital to continued municipal prosperity,” said the Gitrog to the assembled Golgari crowd from atop his pulpit and under his tophat. Unfortunately, he did not notice the mushroom cloud expanding in the distance behind him. Although, as a scrap of theater curtain fluttered down on the breeze, he did catch it with his tongue, out of reflex.

Karador, Ghost Chieftain

"Death tried to uncrown me. But now I return, king of a greater realm."

I made time to join a competitive EDH league at my LGS.  It’s been fun.  I bought into Jarad a while back just to have an EDH deck to mess around with.  Jarad is fun and I’ll still probably end up playing that deck in a few weeks, but I made the investment into a Karador/Boonweaver Combo deck similar to this list.  I probably won’t be making the investment into the duals because I’m a dirt poor grad student, but maybe one day.  I’m also not sure if I like the deck well enough to go that hard into it.  I also have the skeleton of a Food Chain Tazri list.  I’d probably run that tonight but I’m too lazy to throw it together.