#mod barrin

Many people think Urza created Karn as a time probe for his experiments with changing the past. This is partially correct, he got Karn while researching his time machine, but he didn't actually create him. He retrieved him from another plane that he found that was already resilient to the stress of time travel... This whole time. Karn has actually been a Cyberman from the Doctor Who universe that Urza reprogrammed using Xantcha's heartstone.

The metallic human-ish shape matches, the time travel matches, and then when freed from Urza's commands Karn went to create an entirely metallic world filled with metal golem people like him. When that world got overrun by Phyrexian oil that seeped from him, instead of matching the original Phyrexian ideals of perfection being earned and fought for, those New Phyrexians were dead set on "compleating" and transforming flesh people into more of their own, by integrating more metal into them. This is just the typical Cyberman programming worming its way onto Karn's own Glistening Oil.

Oh, and some people in Karn's original plane haven't forgotten about him!

Oh, it’s easy, you just have to follow the cards. The story spotlights should be helpful there, since they’re the ones to tell the story! And since they all have a number at the bottom left, we can follow it to follow the story along. It’s a bit weird it’s numbered out of 254 when there’s only 4 story spotlights, but it probably means they planned out all the story beats and only carded the four most important ones!

First, Heliod gets punished. What for or by whom, the card isn’t very clear, but the mechanics tell us one thing: he has four tasks to perform and then he’s free to do whatever he wants again. The art gives us a few more indications though, reminiscent of both Weight of the Underworld and Chained to the Rocks. Weight of the Underworld’s flavor text can be of help here:

Proud Alkmenos, who would not bow to Erebos in death, is now bowed by his own hubris for all eternity.

It looks like that part is inflicted by Erebos, but notably Heliod isn’t bowed “for all eternity”, just the time to finish his tasks, his offence was probably less grave then. Maybe he didn’t formally greet Erebos with a bow at an official occasion?

As for Chained to the Rocks, it doesn’t have any flavor text, but it’s a white card that works with a mountain. The White-Red god being Iroas, it follows that Iroas would be the one to inflict this one. There seems to be two more tasks but they’re unclear. Climbing stairs and picking up his laurels from the ground? Anyway, it seems like Heliod was rude to more than one god and they punished him for it.

It’s a bit weird of a starting point for a story, but Wizards as shown with the Skyclaves they’re not against completely upending their world upon a revisit to start from a different premise, and it would make sense to introduce the new order quickly. Heliod will probably be done with his tasks by the time we reach the end of the story: four story spotlights for four tasks.

The next one is Triumphant Surge. Now, a bit less is going on here. We can see Elspeth, who’s still dead according to the flavor text, slaying a monster with a big mouth in its head and torso. She’s also using a weapon recognizable in the set as Shadowspear, which is described in its flavor text as “a weapon of darkness for a warrior of light”. Neat! Maybe it was made from the bits of the Blackblade that probably rest at Gideon’s memorial, that carried to the Underworld!

As for the monster she’s slaying, we know it has power 4 or greater, which narrows our search. The mouths are the distinctive trait of Kroxa, Titan of Death’s Hunger, who checks all the boxes: 4+ power, mouths in torso and head, even the columns around it... The overall look is a bit different, but different artists have different interpretations! The card even gains 3 life to counteract Kroxa’s loss of 3 life upon discard (or lack of it).

Now, obviously, Kroxa looks pretty big in its art, but maybe it changes sizes or Elspeth grows to giant size to fight it thanks to a boon or another.

The two titans, Uro and Kroxa, eventually escape the Underworld, as made obvious by the escape mechanic on them, but so does Elspeth, probably to go after them and kill them. But it’s not something that happens yet, as we can see with the next spotlight, so this card probably represents her trying to stop their escape in the first place. Maybe all they need is to be sent to the graveyard by her to escape and it happens right after the Triumphant Surge!

We see those same columns behind, and the sky of the Underworld, which leads me to believe this one happens right after. Now, we can see Daxos here doesn’t wear a golden mask, but we know he’s a Returned (and later a Demigod, but even then he still has the mask on his arm), so he clearly isn’t there. Which makes sense, the flavor text hints at it just being a memory. After seeing Kroxa escape, Elspeth remembers Daxos, still on the surface world, that she negotiated to bring back to life. She doesn’t know he’s a Returned (yet), so she remembers him without the mask. She realizes if the Titans are let to be free on the surface, he’s at risk alongside everyone else, so she begins her Escape to go confront the Titans.

On her way out, she’s followed (patiently, but relentlessly,) by Calix, who we don’t know much about but his card in the set tells us he’s a Green-White planeswalker, looks Nyxborn, and this card shows him walking in the Underworld. It’s unclear wether he’s dead or he just went down there. Calix, just like the Harvests of Karametra, the goddess he matches the colors of and likely the one who blessed him, has a scheduled and destined confrontation with Elspeth. He’s always depicted with thin white tendrils, and it’s obviously a reference to Atarasta, the legendary spider in the set with a white web and the flavor text:

Her webs, spun from her own hair, reach from Nyx to the mortal world and even into the Underworld.

The mystery lifts itself! Calix probably used Arasta’s webs as a guide to reach the Underworld and anchor himself there. Now why is he following Elspeth? For a “destined confrontation”. Now “confrontation” has connotations hinting at a fight, but it could also be more neutral. Elspeth is looking for a way to escape the Underworld. Calix was sent down to meet her keeping track of a web connecting it to the mortal world... That’s it! The titans already started sowing devastation on the mortal world, and Karametra sent Calix to fetch one of the greatest recent heroes of Theros, and one that already proved her ability to kill both gods and monsters, from the Underworld to try to fight them.

The “powerful magical object” the ancient kor runes talk about has a typo. It isn’t called the “lithocore”, it’s called the Lithokor. A incredibly powerful Kor, with the power to reshape worlds and create structures over entire worlds by themself. Their power over stone is unmatched, and we know them better by another, less Kor-centric moniker: The Lithomancer, a mythical planeswalker among the powerful Kor empire. We also know her name: Nahiri.

So, the Elder Dragons of Dominaria are the origin of all dragons of the plane, right? As a reminder, it’s those five. (Plus Ugin but doesn’t change much).

Lord Windgrace is a panther warrior of Urborg, a species that we know exists on Dominaria even today (even in small numbers).

Additionally, the Nekoru are a type of dragons that exists on Dominaria.

(original idea from @goblins-choose-to-live)

Ashiok is our favorite nightmare planeswalker, and is wrapped in mystery (and black smoke). Little is known about Ashiok’s origin, age, exact abilities,... Nearly nothing, in fact, except that Ashiok deals in Nightmares and fears.

But what if, akin to the Raven Man, Ashiok might be a character that we already know, changed from their original incarnation by time and trauma?

What if Ashiok, the Nightmare Weaver is none other than Chainer?

First of all, who’s Chainer? Some of you might not know him, he was a character in the Odyssey storyline, an apprentice then master of Dementia Magic within Otaria’s Cabal, and as such capable of summoning Nightmares from reality and imagination, and often a mix of both. He was also the person who first discovered the Mirari and started a chain of event that would forever change the face of Otaria, and later Dominaria itself.

The Mirari responded to him like no other, and with it, he grew in power tremendously... And slipped more and more into dementia. In the end, he was able to collect the Nightmares of all of Otaria’s dementia casters as his own, and create Nightmares undistinguishable from reality. He accessed his dementia space by surrounding himself by a black smoke, which doesn’t mean anything but is certainly a nice touch.

And then... Chainer died. Consumed by the Mirari’s power and fighting the barbarian Kamahl, Chainer transformed himself into one of his Nightmare, finishing as little more than a black puddle. He was still conscious enough to entrust the Mirari to his friend, Kamahl, as his lucidity came back to him in that state, then perished as Kamahl left him in a corridor of Cabal City.

Or did he?

The Mirari was a probe made by Karn, a planeswalker. Planeswalkers’ spark are ignited by a traumatic event, generally of tremendous magical importance when it comes to oldwalkers. They could also shape their body, and survive almost anything. What if the Mirari called Chainer because it recognized a planeswalker spark within him? What if, as he turned himself into a Nightmare, his spark started igniting, and when Kamahl left him behind, was transported to another plane and reborn as a nightmare never to be seen on Dominaria again?

What if he took a new name, and learned more and more with the next centuries.

Nahiri and Sorin hate each other's guts. That is a fact of the current story. Both of them probably blame the other for casting the first stone, and it only escalated from there. Thousands and millions of dead, planes being mostly destroyed, untold property damage... That quarrel lead to more death and destruction than the large majority of wars.

The answer is generally that they're both partially responsible, and be aware that this post isn't made to reignite that discourse. Our answer here at incorrect mtg theories is that neither of them is responsible. In fact, the person who would start all of this is never mentioned alongside those events, escaping the blame. Who is that? I'll walk you along my thought process.

So, the fighting began more than a thousand years ago. Nahiri had successfully sealed anew the Eldrazis stirring in their stasis on Zendikar. Her distress call to the allies who imprisoned them alongside her, Ugin and Sorin, went unanswered. Worried, she goes to check on them, starting with her mentor and friend, Sorin Markov.

He's alive and well and the message was stopped from reaching him by his new interplanar security system, the duo Helvault/Avacyn. Strong words are exchanged on whether Sorin cares about Nahiri's world, things escalate and the fight starts, and is interrupted by Nahiri being imprisoned in the Helvault for the thousand years to come.

What she would have found? Well, maybe bones. Maybe a hedron cocoon housing a regenerating body. Then she would have left, and affected other planes, differently.

I advance that an external influence pushed them into conflict. Let's imagine, for a second, that they didn't fight, or that Nahiri wasn't imprisoned in the Helvault. Her next move, logically, would have been to look for Ugin and see why HE didn't answer her call.

Now, it is voluntarily kept nebulous how the time travel worked. Technically there's never been time travel, but then Sarkhan exists for no reason proving that there was a 'before' and 'after', even though there shouldn't be. But to keep things as plausible and consequence-free as possible, one of the rules we know of for it is that... "Time Travel on Tarkir will only ever affect Tarkir".

That didn't work great.

To ensure that rule, Nahiri couldn't visit Tarkir and check up on Ugin.

Because of that, the time travel magic, or maybe the Multiverse, made sure she couldn't. And how it did that was by influencing the events, likely through the minds of its participants, of that one discussion on Innistrad to make sure Nahiri would never go to Tarkir then. And Sorin doesn't even think of it until way later, before he has the occasion of leaving after his visit on Tarkir before the loop completes itself.

So, the next time you find yourself debating who of Sorin or Nahiri is more responsible for their fights and the destruction it caused, you'll know what to say. The true people to blame here are Sarkhan and Ugin, who conveniently didn't exist and were mostly dead, respectively, when it happened. A perfect alibi for a perfect crime.

There is not a whole lot more of context to give. For those that are unaware, this one saw its our of glory a few years ago, with this card.

“Fondre sur les” isn’t an exact translation of “Descend upon the”, but it’s close enough, the meaning is carried through. “Fondre” is a verb that is used for birds of prey attacking from the skies, and it’s a good translation here.

Where everything went wrong is “Sinful”. Sin has a direct translation in French, “péché”, and there’s a word that covers both Sinful and Sinner, “pécheur”, built from that. Unfortunately, as you can see here, it’s not the translation that’s been chosen. Instead, Avacyn fond sur les pêcheurs. (Note the different accent on the “e”. That’s all it takes)

Because, as usual, languages are weird, “pêcheurs” is an actual word, and is used more often than pécheurs. A “pêcheur” is a fisherman, revealing to us that those in particular were targeted by Avacyn’s purges. Why you may ask? Maybe she just hates the smell of seafood. But the flavor text talks about saving them. Maybe she had visions of what was to come? Let’s take a look at those fishermen.

Hello everyone to what might become an irregular series, of us looking at mishaps brought forward by Magic’s translation into other languages. Now, a number of these will probably be related to French, since that’s the only non-english language I (mod Barrin) personnally speaks. But if you have ideas, don’t hesitate to submit them!

Now that this is out of the way, let’s get to the main subject, the reason you’re probably reading this. It all comes down to one card:

This card right there comes from Jace Beleren’s Signature Spellbook, an ensemble of spells that we’re told are closely tied to the planeswalker. The Signature Spellbook was only printed in English, but all the cards in it were reprints of cards that already existed. In this case, Threads of Disloyalty was a Betrayers of Kamigawa card that was translated in French by... Fils d’infidélité.

I assume a large majority of you don’t speak French, so let me explain this translation. It’s fairly literal, “Fils” is the plural version of “Fil” (and is pronounced the exact same, this ‘s’ is silent). It means Threads or Strings, and has an extra flavor point because it’s the word used to describe a puppet’s strings. “Infidélité” is a straightforward translation of Disloyalty (literally, “fidélité” means loyaty). “D’“ serves as a ‘of’ here.

So, this translation is straightforward, works and is well and good... Except... French, as most languages, is weird.

“Fils” is also a word by itself. It’s the singular or plural (they’re identical) version of the word that means “Son”. This time the ‘L’ is silent, for some reason. In written form, no way to separate “Fils” and “Fils” outside of the context they’re in.

“Infidélité” is used to mean Disloyalty approximately as often as Disloyalty is used in english, once in a blue moon. However, it has another meaning used way more commonly. “Infidélité” is a ‘proper’ way of describing a spouse cheating on their partner. This is the first meaning of the word every french people will go to.

So, when you put all of this together, Fils d’infidélité can have two (well, to be simple) meanings in French. Either “Threads of Disloyalty”, a made up thing that makes little sense, or a floral yet insulting way to talk about someone’s bastard son(s).