#ikoria: lair of behemoths

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Mothra, Supersonic Queen by Nick Southam

#Godzilla #Kaiju #Magic the Gathering #MtG #Mothra Supersonic Queen #Mothra #Godzilla Subseries #Fantasy #Art #Nick Southam #Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths #Ikoria

[art-of-mtg]

Vulpikeet (Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths) - Leesha Hannigan

#mtg #magic the gathering #tcg #leesha hannigan #vulpikeet #ikoria: lair of behemoths

[fem-blade-adept]

*Phyrexians coming to reap mechanical death upon the planes and all of its inhabitants*

Kamigawa:

Ikoria:

#magic the gathering #ikoria: lair of behemoths #kamigawa: neon dynasty #flavor text

[dwaginfodder]

I have just finished the Ikoria ebook and I have Thoughts

I am rotating Lukka in my mind like some kind of microwaveable food item.

I'm a sucker for Ikoria and everything about it but I just hadn't gotten around to reading the book yet. Very good. Many notes.

Lukka is a very special kind of asshole. He starts as a well-meaning but ultimately ignorant man and, through a combination of arrogance, access to power, and self-feeding isolation and radicalism, becomes a very hateful piece of shit. He's a very interesting take on a red-centered planeswalker to me because he comes from the same slice of red's philosophical color pie as Act of Treason effects. His main flaw isn't that he's stupid (though he's not like. book-smart or anything), it's that he lacks empathy.

Above all else, I take Lukka as a warning.

Lukka starts the novel as like, this prodigal foot soldier at the head of the first squad of Specials. If you're anything like me calling a bunch of people "Specials :)" because they're good at killing things is like, a giant red fuckoff fascism banner, and you aren't too far off because Drannith is a military aristocracy from hell. But Lukka likes it here because everything makes sense and doesn't challenge his values until a giant cat kills most of his friends and then challenges his values.

Particularly, the giant cat challenges his values by bonding with him and forcing him to empathize with it. This scares the shit out of Lukka, who is used to treating these things as existential threats to his life and the life of everyone he loves (i.e. his fiancee). He telepathically panics and tells the flying cat to fuck off so it does, and then he passes out and wakes up in the hospital with some military aide writing down every word he says. His fiancee, Jirina Kudro, helps him out of the city and he fucks off into the woods with Vivien to go find the cat.

Once he does, he runs into some other people with mental connections to Ikoria's monsters. And this is the kicker: he has no care or sympathy for the others in his position or curiosity at how they live away from the cities. He just wants, by his own words, to go home. This will proceed to be his defining trait. And this makes the other bonders accept him! Because, much like many real minority communities, they understand being displaced, they understand being hunted for what they are, they understand the desire to make oneself a found family.

Instead of empathizing with people who might welcome him, and looking past differences, he instead goes off on his selfish quest to redeem himself with the status quo he comes from. This gets him manipulated and pushed into alienating himself from both groups, isolated in a mentality where rejecting his plan means rejecting him, reinforcing his ideas and driving them to even more extreme ends. Even if at the heart of his issue he is on some level correct (General Kudro and the military aristocracy of Drannith is corrupt and fascist and unchanging), his methods and rhetoric harm both (what if we used our allies, a subset of our minority group, as thoughtless weapons, objectifying them and stripping their own rights to empower our own? doesn't that sound great?).

This repeats itself on Arcavios in the Strixhaven story. He gets to the plane, find civilization, and is immediately persecuted for being weird and suspicious and out of place. He gets in a fight with a dragon cop and then runs off with the Oriq, the gang of criminal mages who rebel against the dragons who founded Strixhaven and, from all we've heard, effectively rule the plane.

And again, the Oriq aren't wrong about the dragon founders being vaguely tyrannical (with some of the lore mentioning a banning of ally-colored magic on the... continent? plane?). But Lukka is still driven by selfishness and power, and instead of informing people of possibilities, he helps the Oriq unleash a murderous war avatar inside of a school. (This will not be the first nor last time a red 'walker helps or actively commits a war crime and it gets pretty passed over.)

Lukka is fundamentally a warning against the thought process of (and rhetoric used by) people like TERFs, splinters of a minority who fall into hate trying to appease the majority and ultimately fail.

#im too tired right now to figure out how phyrexia clicks into this #but ill probably go feral about it tomorrow #fox yips #magic the gathering #lukka #ikoria: lair of behemoths

[prosperity-post]

#mtg #magic the gathering #fantasy #tcg #gaming #fantasy card game #throne of eldraine #theros beyond death #ikoria: lair of behemoths #wotc #wizards of the coast

[jasper-the-menace]

37/55 luka/jirina?

Fanfiction Trope Mashup

37: Coming Out Fic 55: Established Relationship

Now we're talking.

"Jirina?"

Lukka's voice was quiet, soft. Not like how the Coppercoat's voice carried in battle against the monsters of Ikoria. Which raised some concern in Jirina Kudro, who put down the spear she had been polishing.

"Is something wrong, Lukka?" she asked carefully. In truth, lots of things were wrong. She was desperate to talk to him about something that was bound to come up sometime soon. Their relationship had been developing so fast that it left them both without much time to get their feet under themselves.

"I... Yes? No? Maybe? I don't know," he said quickly, as though trying to talk himself through whatever he wanted to say without giving himself a chance to back out. "You'd find out at some point anyway, so I wanted to talk to you about something, um...important. Something that'll probably piss your dad off."

Something that would piss General Kudro off. Jirina put her own worries on the backburner for a minute. "What is it, love?"

Lukka ran a hand through his short hair, taking a deep breath. "Okay, so...I didn't always look like this."

"I suppose not, not many children come out of the womb with abs and a five-o-clock shadow."

He laughed, his voice shaking with nervousness. "I- Yeah, you're right, but that's not what I was getting at. I mean I wasn't...born a man. I sought out a mage when I was younger who managed to change me into a man, but...I don't exactly have the right tools, if you know what I mean. So, uh...biological kids might be out of the question for us."

Jirina let out a sigh of relief. "Oh thank goodness, I thought I was the only one. Let me guess, it was Old Man Henrik?"

"How did you- You're joking."

"I'm not." Jirina set her whetstone aside and crossed the room to stand by Lukka. "So... I've got you covered on that side."

Lukka laughed, which was a lot less nervous now. "Well, that's good."

(PS, the divider I used was one I created on @jasper-graphics if y'all are interested.)

(PPS, I am a strong advocate for T4T Jirina/Lukka. Not that canon would ever give a shit about Lukka.)

~Jasper

#answered #anonymous #magic the gathering #ikoria: lair of behemoths #writing #my writing #lukka #jirina kudro #ask game: fanfiction trope mashup

[oops-prow-did-it-again]

yall do lukka DIRTY. he didn't even HURT that cat - it was the drannith general who killed it, after it returned to drannith of its own accord - meanwhile it slaughtered three of his 4 specials forces within like 5 minutes of meeting it

#lukka #mtg #ikoria #ikoria: lair of behemoths #i have unpopular opinions. but I'm gonna yell abt them anyway

[infinitymythos]

The gods hide themselves at the howls of Kaijus, divinities flee at the sound of their steps🐉♾🦖

By:

#ikoria: lair of behemoths #mtg cards #mtg art #fantasy #digital art #digital painting #fantasy art #mythical beasts #kaiju #kaiju art #kaiju monster #monster art #monster design #card art #monster aesthetic #giant monsters #ig art #ig artist #human artist #concept art #Instagram

[jeskai-lesbian]

#mtg #magic set trailer #magic the bracketing #round one #new phyrexia #khans of tarkir #ikoria: lair of behemoths

[girlhusband1000wives]

Lurrus of the Dream Den, now in beautiful watercolor!

#mtg fan art #mtg #my art #artists on tumblr #art #fanart #lurrus #ikoria: lair of behemoths #cat #nightmare #watercolor

[mtg-cards-hourly]

Umori, the Collector

Artist: Jehan Choo TCG Player Link Scryfall Link EDHREC Link

#mtg #magic the gathering #tcg #$0.21 #jehan choo #umori the collector #ikoria: lair of behemoths #legendary #creature #ooze

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Emergent Ultimatum by Zack Stella

#Magic the Gathering #MtG #MtGIKO #Ikoria #Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths #Emergent Ultimatum #Fantasy #Art #Zack Stella #Wizards of the Coast

[art-of-mtg]

Swamp (Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths) - Svetlin Velinov

#mtg #magic the gathering #tcg #svetlin velinov #swamp #ikoria: lair of behemoths

[refreshdaemon]

A slight improvement specific to Ikoria does not restore the bundle to its full glory.

#Magic: The Gathering #Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths #MTGIKO

[dungeonmastersconsortium]

GM Tip

If you are struggling to think of unique creatures/monsters for your players to come up against, encounter, meet, whatever, turn to Magic: The Gathering for inspiration. If you're looking for animals/beasts/monsters for instance, look especially at the set "Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths". This isn't me being a shill for MTG, I promise. You can access all cards at gatherer.wizards.com for free. Examples:

I promise you, for any concept for a creature, person, whatever, MTG has been going on for so long and has had such a variety of sets (most with legitimately cool, fun, good concepts) that there will be an expansion that has something you can draw inspiration from. There's not a single D&D creature type that you can't pull something from MTG for. If you don't know where to start, legit send me an ask and I'll give you a set or two, as well as some examples.

#dungeons & dragons #magic: the gathering #d&d 5e #I'm not kidding #send the asks cowards

[sexhaver]

a few years back, during the Ikoria set, MTG did a marketing tie-in with the Godzilla franchise where certain creature cards in the set would have an alternate full-art printing, with the name and art of a roughly equivalent character from Godzilla lore. for the most part, it was pretty fucking sick:

however, there was a slight... optics issue with the alternate printing for Void Beckoner

"okay, so it's a big creature that can kill stuff with the mere suggestion of its presence before it ever hits the battlefield. hey, Godzilla had a deadly breath attack in one of the older movies, right? let's go with that!"

and so it came to be that the following card saw print:

in April of 2020.

this, in turn, led to WOTC scrambling to rename the card "Spacegodzilla, Void Invader" and put out this article, which still has by far the funniest title of any article on their website:

#my hearthstone/mtg group chat is still named Statement On Spacegodzilla #also this came right on the heels of them having. uh. another controversy about (old) card names #but that one was less “unfortunate but funny” and more “just racist”