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Art links:
Avacyn
Emeria
Call of the Void
Ghostly Warden // Ghostly Bindings
I had this idea for the longest time of a set (or likely, a couple of sets) in which Emrakul, as part of escaping innistrad's moon, pulls theros close to innistrad and the two planes start bleeding into each other. I never did do much with the set, cause I could never quite figure out what I wanted it to be. I knew I wanted to add a bit of an enchantment thing to the innistrad side of things to show the bleed through though, and these are a few cards that came out of that effort. Avacyn and Emeria are both the result of nyx bleeding through, and make for a fun mirrored pair. Curses just feel like a good, innistraddy way to add extra enchantments. And disturb returns since it already was an innistrad mechanic that kind of leaned into an enchantment thing (though this time, the spirits are gonna be enchantment creatures too).
Card transcriptions below
The first
Avacyn, the Golden Sun 7W
Legendary Enchantment Creature- Angel [mythic]
Flying, indestructible
As long as your devotion to white is less than five, Avacyn isn’t a creature.
At the beginning of your upkeep, return target creature or enchantment card from your graveyard to the battlefield. Put an indestructible counter on it.
8/8
The second
Emeria, the Silver Moon 7C
Legendary Enchantment Creature- Angel [mythic]
When you cast this spell, each player exiles their hand then draws that many cards.
Flying, indestructible
As long as you control fewer than five colorless nonland permanents, Emeria isn’t a creature.
At the beginning of your upkeep, you may play a card exiled with Emeria without paying its mana cost.
8/8
The third
Call of the Void 1
Enchantment- Aura Curse [common]
Enchant player
2, Sacrifice Call of the Void: Exile enchanted player’s graveyard.
7, Sacrifice Call of the Void: Exile target creature enchanted player controls.
The fourth
Ghostly Warden 2W
Enchantment Creature- Spirit [uncommon]
When Ghostly Warden enters the battlefield, exile target creature an opponent controls until Ghostly Warden leaves the battlefield.
Disturb 2W (You may cast this card from your graveyard transformed for its disturb cost.)
2/3
Ghostly Bindings
[W] Enchantment- Aura
Enchant creature you control
When Ghostly Bindings enters the battlefield, exile target creature an opponent controls until Ghostly Bindings leaves the battlefield.
If Ghostly Bindings would be put into a graveyard from anywhere, exile it instead.
End transcription
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Have resolved to actually start posting the art I’ve done this year so we’re starting with Blight, Lampad-kin (fire genasi) Cleric of Athreos from our Theros campaign run by @spoonsandsporks (<3).
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62 Sealock Monster, by Adam Paquette for "Theros"
63 Champion of Stray Souls, by Aleksi Briclot for "Born of the Gods"
64 Cruel Feeding, by Jason A. Engle for "Journey into Nyx"
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i havent really stopped thinking about ashiok all day i will not lie
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Magic: The Gathering: Core Set 2015 Clash Pack vs. Theros Face the Hydra
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Art © MissRosieWolf, Aug. 2020
Twitter is uh...not having a good time. So I'm slowly uploading art from my Twitter and onto this here tumblr account of mine.
It is, indeed, another Dungeons & Dragon / Magic the Gathering character of mine: Eliana, a Hexblade Warlock I played in the Theros campaign setting (it was kind of a follow-up to our short-lived Ravnica campaign). We only had like...four sessions of Theros before the DM pulled the plug.
I'll redesign my bean and use her in my own D&D things since I don't see myself bringing her back to play with as a Player.
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Alright, guess it’s time to address the apocalyptic legal elephant in the room:
For those who might not know, WotC plans were leaked to “update” the OGL in what is basically a scorched earth policy with regards to 3rd party material/creators in the hopes of cutting out the competition and forcing people to use their new products.
As someone who lived through the 4th edition/pathfinder schism, the situation is laughably similar: D&D is flourishing more than it ever has (thanks primarily to the OGL) but the execs at Hasbro want more of the money spent on the hobby to wind up in their pockets. Oblivious to the fact that the opensource nature of the game is what draws people to it, they task the design team with creating a proprietary virtual tabletop through which they can sell d&d content without having to worry about books or pdfs being pirated. This rightfully outrages the fandom and burns every scrap of good will they had towards WotC, resulting in a dead edition that’s maligned years afterword as folks hop to the newer, easier game system.
The thing that’s different this time is that the d&d playerbase has grown exponentially since the days of the first OGL, with 5th edition being the easiest version of the game to run/pick up and so many resources online, there’s almost no barrier to entry besides finding a stable/accommodating group. Hell, with the explosive popularity of liveplay series you don’t even need to be actively playing in order to be in the fandom. All of these people are networked together in a fandom hivemind spread across twitter/reddit/youtube and WotC just made an enemy of every single one of them with its shameless and destructive cashgrab. No streamer or 3rd party publisher wants to give Hasbro 25% of their revenue, to say nothing of having their project “cancelled” if WotC sees it as a threat to any of their current projects ( see the huge number of spelljammer materials published after the company dropped the ball).
It took about two years after the announcement of 4th edition for Paizo to come out with pathfinder, and I have no doubt the OGL leak kickstarted every major 3rd party publisher brainstorming some legally distinct version of the 5e ruleset. In the coming months I expect to see a number of these surrogate systems floating around the internet in much the same way that the onednd playtest content, but spurred on with the added “fuck you Hasbro” energy. After that, it’s only a matter of time till one of the big streamers picks up one of these systems and popularizes it, not wanting to pay the 25%tithe to WotC. Personally my money’s on Critical Role: they were one of the major factors in popularizing 5th edition and they’ve got the fandom pull to legitimize any claimant to the throne.
To step away from playing oracle for a bit, I’d like to finish up this post by dunking on WotC:
*ahem*
HOW FUCKING DUMB TO YOU HAVE TO BE TO TURN YOUR ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE AGAINST YOU IN ONE NIGHT? This is some new coke/Reynolds pamphlet/invading Russia in winter levels of shooting yourself in the foot. Wizards was on shaky ground to begin with given that they’re coming off a series of notably disappointing products AND trying to launch a new edition/virtual tabletop/battlepass system, but to follow that up with a retroactive rules change that lets them outright steal from or shut down creators? It’s laughable. Maybe, MAYBE they could have made this work if they were knocking it out of the park with new releases every year and cultivating a base of diehard WotC loyalists, but the fact of the matter is that aside from the brand name, the hobby has largely passed them by. Everything that Wizards does, from player options to settings to monsters to rules modules, someone else does better because they’re willing to take risks and put in the effort. Aside from the elegant simplicity of 5e’s base system, I can count maybe two pieces of actual game design (piety from Theros, ship combat from Saltmash) that I consider usable at my table, which is SAYING SOMETHING considering we’re nearing the end of the game’s ten year golden age.
I know we’ll weather this storm, we always have, and regardless of what happens I still know my friends and I will enjoy gathering around the table and slinging dice even though we might not be playing “dungeons and dragons” in a couple years time. I’ll keep my eye on the horizon, and let you know where I find safe harbour.
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10 Year Anniversary of Dack Fayden Comics Ending
On March 19, 2014, the final installment of the original Magic IDW comics came to a cliffhanger ending with Theros #5.
Magic had published Planeswalker-centric webcomics from 2008 to 2011 for free on their website, however the Dack comics starting in 2012 took a big swing: Attempt to establish an audience for a then-uncarded Planeswalker and tell stories visiting the concurrent expansion settings (Innistrad, Ravnica, Theros). All of this during a time of low story momentum and transition with novel lines ending, main story drought during Innistrad block, the slow beginnings of web fiction, and a shift to enovels in Return to Ravnica and Theros.
While Dack Fayden would prove popular enough and receive his debut Planeswalker card in Conspiracy, our final chance to see him alive again wouldn't be until five years later during War of the Spark. Dack's storyline with Ashiok on Theros had been resolved offscreen, he was cardless in the set proper, and his death was broadcast in the cinematic trailer before the novel even released. Can't win 'em all... or most of them for that matter.
Dack's adventures were far from Magic's first or last stab at entering the world of comics, but they'll always stand out as the fan-favorite version. Cheers to a decade!
Dack Fayden by Chris Evenhuis
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Are there parallel or alternate universes in Magic? Such as...
- Ravnica-2 where each guild is a 3-color combination
- Theros-3 where gods are artifacts
- Jace (from Vryn-5) and Jace (from Vryn-7) meet each other
Planes can have alternate universes, yes, but it's not common. The three planes we know have them, or had them, are Dominaria, Rabiah, and Tarkir.
Dominaria's you can see in the set Planar Chaos, there's one where Mirri strikes down Selenia instead of Crovax, one where the Odyssey legends are color shifted, one with different primeval dragons with the wedge colors instead of shards, one where Serra was obsessed with Sphinxes instead of angels, that kind of thing. It's possible these are all the same AU, I'm only listing them as different, we don't have more stories about them than the basics. In the Planar Chaos novel we also see "Ice Age Phyrexians" but don't learn more about them.
Rabiah is refracted 1,001 times, which in the diegetic reason there are no legends in the set. Each refraction is different in some way, although it's not really explored much except in Taysir's backstory for the five versions of him that fused.
Tarkir is more recent, but we've see the Khans timeline, which doesn't exist anymore.
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re: blocks. Character limit is really restraining my ability to convey this thought in its entirety. I think the recent asks haven't put to words the difference between 9 months worth of sets and the stories they represent. I believe it's less about having 3 sets worth of cards, but having an adequate amounts of stories to build the world and putting the named characters to paper. Theros Block didn't sell me on Theros, seeing the journey of Elspeth through the plane of Theros did.
Each set having the equivalent stories as a three-set block requires us tripling are amount of stories which is a huge ask for the creative team.
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Wilds of Eldraine Is More Arthurian Than Throne of Eldraine Was
Wizards of the Coast personnel, most prominently Mark Rosewater, have been transparent that Eldraine began its creative life as an Arthurian/Camelot inspired plane. Which it still is, but it was originally just that. However, they'd run some polls, and general public's recognition of things from Arthurian legend was limited in scope compared to the actual breadth of source material. So, to avoid a second Kamigawa, they supplemented it with the "fairy tale plane" premise, which has also been on the short list for years but didn't have enough thematic legs to stand on its own. They would play off each other: fairy tales needed a kingdom of humans, and Camelot legends needed a magical element outside the kingdom.
It was a pretty great idea. Then, the set came out, and the "Arthurian half" of it was received much more mildly than the fairy tale half. So, in Wilds of Eldraine, the fairy tale half is given much, much more prominence. This is obvious in every aspect of the set, from key art to draft archetypes, to the absence of Knight typal.
So this post's title probably seems like a weird sentiment to have. But I feel like Throne's Arthurian side feel flat because it was barely there to begin with.
Here, walk with me through a creative exercise. Suppose you have been tasked with making a setting inspired by Arthurian legend, the way Theros is inspired by Greek myth. You do not yet know that you will be given a fairy tale parachute later on. What's step one?
You probably said "make an analogue of King Arthur and/or Camelot". Because that's the right answer. And that is, indeed what they did.
Sort of.
Eldraine's Camelot is Ardenvale, and its high king is the Good King Algenus Kenrith. He underwent many trials to claim his crown, and all of the realm looks to him for leadership.
King Kenrith's card is not in booster pack, and his entire role in the story is that he is kidnapped and turned into an ungulate.
That's a pretty odd way to handle the King Arthur of your King Arthur setting, in the set that's introducing the setting. But okay.
You have your Arthur expy, and you have his kingdom. What is Step 2 in making a resonant facsimile of the Matter of Britain?
If you said "make four more Camelots"... Well, I'd say that's an odd pull. Given that there was only one Camelot in the source material. However, I did say that in this scenario you were designing for a Magic set, and if a plane doesn't have five or ten of its main gimmick, Richard Garfield will just die on the spot.
This is how we get the five courts. There is Ardenvale, yes, but that's just the white guys. Each court is a different take on the virtues of knighthood and chivalry. Ardenvale values honor and loyalty, Vantress values wisdom and knowledge, Locthwain values determination and persistence, Embereth values bravery and valor, and Garenbrig values strength and fortitude. Thus, the Knight, which is traditionally very white and sometimes black, can be in any color it wants this set and still make sense.
And that was very cool of them, honestly! However, it doesn't get us any closer to the setting feeling Arthurian. Setting aside that you're making a Magic set, ask: once you have King Arthur himself and Camelot, what do you need next to truly be Arthurian-evocative?
There's a pretty good chance that you said either Merlin or Excalibur. And Eldraine does indeed have those! Sort of.
This is Gadwick the Wizened and Embercleave. The former is from Vantress, and the latter associated with Embereth.
I have just told you all the lore about Gadwick and Embercleave.
They are both part of cycles of cards. Gadwick is the only card in his cycle that has anything to do with King Arthur conceptually, and in-universe he does nothing significant and is unrelated to Kenrith or Ardenvale, so it's really only process of elimination and word of God that places him as this setting's Merlin. Embercleave is part of a cycle of artifacts meant to represent different artifacts from Arthurian legend. Except the blue one, which is another fairy tale thing, and the green one, which is... Stonehenge, for some reason.
In fact, Embercleave almost did not exist. It was originally the Irencrag, this world's Sword in the Stone-- or rather, Stone with the Sword. (Note: Excalibur isn't even the sword in the stone, Excalibur was from the lady of the lady, the stone sword is different, look it up) Knights of Embereth, as a rite of passage, stick their weapon into the rocky edifice, and if they can pull it back out again, they are worthy of knighthood. And that's a very fun, cute way to take a recognizable motif of the source material and expand it into a whole cultural thing, genuinely.
But you're telling me early drafts of your Story of King Arthur Plane didn't have an Excalibur? Like, I'm glad that you caught it before you went to print, but where are your priorities where that almost happened? And it's not like Arthurian myth has some kind of dearth of legendary relics! Rhongomyniad, Failnaught, Carnwennan, the Ring of Dispel, the Green Sash, Prydwen. There, I just made another five color cycle with one to spare, and I wasn't even trying!
But fine, it's fine. You have your King Arthur, your Merlin, and your Excalibur, and even your Holy Grail, even though not a one has anything to do with the other and only one of them will do anything of significance within the story. You also almost had a Morgan le Fay analogue in the form of Sheoldred the Whispering Witch, but you cut her later in design because you wanted Eldraine to be a breather period after WotS and not another immediate ramp-up (good call, btw, but her replacement, Oko, is very much not a Morgan).
Is there... anything else? Something... synonymous with King Arthur, present in virtually every pop culture depiction of the man in some fashion? Something that a layman might naturally finish the sentence "King Arthur and his..." if prompted?
That's right, his Round Table!
King Arthur's iconic Round Table, which he famously sat at all by himself. His Round Table which was definitely intrinsically magical and NOT, by any means, a symbol of a regent placing himself on equal footing with those who swore allegiance to him.
In case my sarcasm is not portraying my frustration adequately: there are no Knights of the Round Table in this set. There plenty of knights, sure. A glut of them. And, as seen above, there is something of a Round Table that some of them are associated with. But there is not elite fellowship of legendary knights with the King counted among their distinguished and exclusive ranks.
The set Throne of Eldraine have five legendary knights at uncommon, plus a sixth if you count the commander precon. None of them have any lore or characterization beyond "hey remember how we said knights of this color are like? this is one of them".
Lancelot, the peerless master of weapons whose base desires doomed the court to infighting. Bedivere, the king's first knight of unfailing loyalty and single arm. Kay, the king's stepbrother turned protector, know for his mix of fire magic and swordplay. Gawain the gentleman, whose arrogance is tempered into humility. Mordred, the child of the king and his worst enemy, traitor to the crown. Tristan of the tragic romance. Galahad, Agravain, Percival.
Not a single one of them has an intentional parallel in Throne. All real estate for legendary knight characters in what is, ostensibly, The Legendary Knight Setting, is dedicated to going "knights are in all five colors in this setting isn't that neat".
And one might think "oh, they were just worried that the average consumer isn't going to have the knowledge of the specific of King Arthur's court". And ordinarily might be inclined to agree with you, but: they printed Questing Beast.
Yes, everybody's favorite 4/4 for four with three keywords and more further upsides than most would care to count. The questing beast is an actual thing from Arthurian lore, and like a surprising number of other mythical creatures, it probably originated from someone poorly describing a giraffe. Still, it's extremely obscure. I count myself the biggest authority in Arthurian stuff in most of my friend circles, and I'd never heard of this thing until its card was spoiled.
So this thing that almost nobody had ever heard of, it gets to be in the set, legendary, at mythic, and strong enough to warp standard, PLUS explicit lore importance. But making room for a single Knight of the Round Table? In the Camelot setting? Couldn't be done.
I'm not asserting this is actually true, but looking at the set, I can't help but feel that whoever pitched "let's do an Arthurian world after War of the Spark" knew nothing about King Arthur stuff besides what cartoons and movies made casual reference to. Like, really. Assume that you aren't allowed to say "there's a king" or "there are knights", because those are both things true of very many planes, and tell me, how would explain what makes Eldraine "Arthurian"?
Oathsword Knight is a Monty Python reference, is that anything?
So, yeah. The set comes out, and according to market research, the Arthurian side of the plane "tested poorly", which is to say, most players didn't realize it was there, which is to say, they realized it wasn't. So, in response to this-- I mean, by sheer coincidence, the Phyrexians destroyed all five courts in the invasion. References to them still exist, but Eldraine is focusing much more on the fairy-tale side of things this time, hence the name Wilds of Eldraine. There's knights, but no knight typal. Humans, but no adamant.
And then something funny happened.
I won't go into every last detail of Wilds of Eldraine's story, but: Will and Rowan are in disagreement of how The Realm should be salvaged. Rowan, frustrated with ideas like "social reform" and "negotiation", wants to do so with her magical prowess, and is willing to swear fealty to her evil witch aunt to make it happen. Will, meanwhile, is more level-headed, and wants to untie the realm by simply being a good leader and trusting the people to believe in him. And at first, they don't. But Syr Imodane, knight turned raider turned knight again, sees his earnestness and decides to place her loyalty in Will, and others follow after her.
One day I was thinking about Imodane, who features prominently in the story, and I had a small realization. The prosthetic arm, the mixture of fire magic and melee combat, being first to join. She's sort of like Bedivere and Kay rolled into one character. Except, you know, meaner, and a woman of color.
Then, like a flash, it clicked for me.
Algenus was never the Arthur. He was the Uther, THAT'S why he barely did anything. Will Kenrith is the King Arthur, the boy who became king because somebody had to. Eriette is the Morgan. And Rowan, her pawn and Will's flesh and blood, is the Mordred.
And just like that, they've done it. They have captured, not just the surface-level aesthetics of the Matter of Britain, which are by themselves nothing extraordinary, but the SPIRIT of it.
Many people thought getting rid of the courts would dilute the setting's Arthurian theme to nonexistence, but honestly? The courts never had anything to do with the Arthurian theme, not really. Apparently, they were just getting in the way.
Ultimately, making a setting "Arthurian" is a foolhardy task, because the setting of King Arthur himself isn't interesting, and it's not what makes the tale of Camelot interesting. But making STORY "Arthurian", making its cast and their relationships and their arcs and their virtues line up with what the tale of Camelot explores? That's something. Strange that it took making a limited archetype about evil candy to accomplish this, but we got there.
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Nissa's Pilgrimage Part I: Worldwaker
Preface:
Hi there! My name is Steven; I recently wrapped up a master’s degree in library science and am doing my best to segue careers. Since my terminally long job hunt has left me with more down time than I ever wanted to have, I decided to put my English degree to good(?🤷) use by writing a bunch of personal essays on Magic the Gathering, as it is a topic I have been obsessed with for around a decade now. I didn’t intend to share these ramblings at first, and I began this whole project for my own edification, to keep my brain active, and to prevent myself going insane from boredom. However, I thought it couldn’t hurt to throw these online and see what comes of it.
This particular piece is part 1 of ???. I have a lot of notes in my drafts and even more thoughts in my head, so it may just go on indefinitely until someone (finally) gives me a dang job.
TLDR: I’m a deranged MTG Vorthos and former English major with a lot of thoughts and even more time on my hands, so I began a handful of English major-y essays on my pet topics. I’m posting them here for now.
Introduction:
Almost every Magic player who began learning the game after the planeswalker card type was introduced in the Lorwyn expansion in October, 2007 can tell you a story about the first planeswalker card they fell in love with. It might have been because the mechanics on the card melded perfectly with their preferred strategy of play, it might have been because they kept up with the story and were invested in the represented character’s journey, or it might have simply been because they thought the art looked cool.
For whatever reason under Mirrodin’s five suns a Magic player first became attached to a planeswalker and their cards, the character often become symbolic for our love of the game itself. These symbols grow beyond simple loyalty abilities on a piece of cardboard and become inexorably intertwined with our own personal Magic experience.
For me, this planeswalker was Nissa Revane.
You see, in March of 2014, I started working at The Game Closet in Waco, Texas. I had just finished getting a master’s degree in English, so of course, my first job out in the real world was to become a clerk at my local game store (really putting my humanities education to work). Having grown up in a small Louisiana town, I never had a chance to play Magic. I entered the tabletop gaming world through my obsession with Dungeons & Dragons, Shadowrun, and sundry other RPG’s.
Nevertheless, as Magic players made up the majority of the store’s customer base, I took it upon myself to learn the game. The Theros block was wrapping up at the time with its third set, Journey into Nyx, and a bunch of friendly players were more than happy to unload all of their bulk commons and uncommons to me (Journey into Nyx was famously underpowered, after all), so I tried to make a standard deck out of all this draft chaff and run it at Friday Night Magic.
It didn’t go too well.
However, I was happy with the overall direction of the deck, and I immediately discovered that I loved green decks, specifically green ramp strategies.
I was enthralled with the idea of accelerating mana so that you can play flashy, intimidating creatures and cool, game warping spells far earlier than you have any right to, so I continued to tweak the deck until I made a functioning version of the Theros Standard Mono Green Devotion deck. Even though I wasn’t good enough at the game in my early days to consistently win (even at the local level), I had a lot of fun with it! It was fast and explosive, but for some reason, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it was missing something.
However, not a few months later, the Magic 2015 Core Set gets released, and the chase mythic rare in the set’s early days was exactly the kind of card I was looking for: Nissa, Worldwaker. I had no idea who this Nissa character was supposed to be — though I did think the art looked pretty cool — but I was in awe of the card’s abilities! It was precisely the kind of fuel I felt my standard deck needed at the time, and it turns out I was right! My Magic the Gathering “competitive” “career” begins and ends with a handful of first place rankings at my local game store’s standard FNM events, but as small a victory as those are, nearly all of these top rankings were due to Nissa, Worldwaker.
Needless to say, I became devoted to the character overnight.
Exploration:
But who is Nissa, really? Let’s start with the basics. Nissa is an elf planeswalker from the plane of Zendikar, a largely untamed wilderness where the land itself has a will of its own, causing unforeseeable (un)natural disasters called “the roil” by Zendikari locals. According to the recently-released Magic The Gathering: The Visual Guide by Jay Annelli, Nissa is in her 60s and she is 5 feet, 2 inches tall, making her the smallest of the original four members of the Gatewatch (five if you count Liliana). Nissa has a mystical connection to the land and can sense a plane’s leylines, giving her a measure of control over the ground she walks on; this allows her to animate the very land itself to fight her enemies, a narrative element that has been expressed mechanically time and time again on Nissa’s cards throughout the years.
Ostracized from the elven clan she was born in, the Joraga, for the crime of having this connection to the land (a rare brand of sorcery called “animism” in the lore of Magic), Nissa spent large stretches of years alone with only the spirits of the natural world as companions. This has made her socially awkward to a fault, and the issues she has in communicating with her friends (and later, lovers) has been a fairly consistent plot point throughout all of the (canon) story arcs she has played a part in.
In a fictional universe that contains ageless elder dragons, a man-eating toad, a sentient robot who literally created a planet from scratch, and a wizard who once phased an entire continent out of the time stream, Nissa Revane’s eternal struggle to express simple feelings to people she shares a bond with always seemed to me the most human element in the Magic canon. Additionally (big surprise), that’s something I have in common with her. While other Vorthoses have made the argument that Nissa is on the autism spectrum, that is something I have neither the personal experience with nor the education of to speak about. That is certainly a valid lens to view this character through, however, so if that interests you, I’d encourage you to search up these pieces on your own.
What I can speak on with a certain level of expertise, however, is the personal struggle of being a shy, withdrawn introvert in an extroverted world. As a lifelong wallflower with a vivid imagination and a rich inner world, I can deeply relate to a character who doesn’t know how to put her intense feelings to words. For example, in the final story of the Kaladesh arc, Renewal, Nissa tries to express to her companion Chandra just how deeply she wants to be “friends” with her:
Nissa swallowed past the desert in her throat. "I don't speak often. I lived alone for...decades. Zendikar was my companion. We understood each other at a level deeper than words. I...I don't know how to talk to you. I'm trying to learn."
Chandra looked up, eyes wide and startled. "You don't know how to talk to me?"
"I will make mistakes," Nissa said. "Pick the wrong words. Misunderstand yours. I'll act strange and won't know that I am. But if you can be patient with me, I would like to be..." Waves of sky-song memory welled upward, symphonies of color and warmth, resonant movement and shared breath. She stilled them, reduced them, and forced out angular words shaped in a pallid shadow of acceptable truth. "...your friend."
Chandra's hands leapt out to enfold hers, warm as a bird's nest. "I dunno," she sniffled, one corner of her mouth quivering upward. "I think you're pretty good at picking words."
"It took all afternoon to decide how to say this."
While this section of Renewal is a cornerstone of Nissa’s and Chandra’s future romantic relationship, that is a topic big enough to warrant its own essay in order to do it justice. For now, though, let’s focus on this bit: “‘I would like to be…’ Waves of sky-song memory welled upward, symphonies of color and warmth, resonant movement and shared breath. She stilled them, reduced them, and forced out angular words shaped in a pallid shadow of acceptable truth. ‘...your friend.’” Nissa’s never ending struggle to use words grand enough to communicate the intensity of the feelings in her heart has stuck with me since Renewal was posted on Magic’s website in 2017. I doubt I’m the only one, either.
Heroic Intervention
Nissa was already the character I was most invested in back in 2017, but observing her deep well of emotions she didn’t know to express and her entire lifetime's worth of interests and experiences she didn’t know how to talk about helped me, I think, come to terms the previous two-and-a-half decades of my own life that I spent cowering in corners at parties, being as unobtrusive as possible in the lives of my friends and family, and holding myself back because I didn’t think anyone would ever want me around - as a friend, as a lover, or even as a coworker. This section, from later on in Renewal, really gutted me at the time:
What would she do, if she had the time again? If she didn't flinch at light, noise, and touch, or speak in gestures and movements strange and off-putting to others?
How could she tell this new life to laugh and weep without reservation or regret; to sing to the stars and waters, or to nothing at all; to love unreserved and unguarded; to treasure every moment with those beloved; to forgive any regretted trespass; to dance when moved to; to savor long silences in warm company; to greet each dawn, each face with the thought, this will be an adventure; to be brave, and kind, and trusting, and...
...like Chandra.
The aetherborn waited, flickering. But why would anyone find her thoughts on the matter of value, anyway?
Don't be afraid to follow your heart, Nissa told them.
...Why would that be scary?
Halfway across Ghirapur, her body exhaled a laugh into the deepening twilight. May it ever puzzle you.
It wasn’t too long after this story was published that I began my own journey from hiding in the shadows to living my life in a way I was proud of. I moved away with the woman I was dating at the time, and even though that relationship ended up not working out, I spent five long, fun, life-altering years learning to
laugh and weep without reservation or regret; to sing to the stars and waters, or to nothing at all; to love unreserved and unguarded; to treasure every moment with those beloved; to forgive any regretted trespass; to dance when moved to; to savor long silences in warm company; to greet each dawn, each face with the thought, this will be an adventure.
I wonder to this day if the courage Nissa displayed during her own pilgrimage helped nurture in me the courage I needed in my own…
Conclusion
If you made this far, thanks! I’m not sure who, if any, will be interested in these endless ramblings, but if you're here, I hope you found something in it to enjoy!
Further entries in this little series will cover who Nissa is as a character, how she has been treated by various writers in Magic's various seasons, and why that matters (to me at least). The next longform piece I post will go over Nissa’s dual origins, why she was retconned from an incompetent xenophobe into the cinnamon roll with baggage we know today, and what both the Magic Story Team and its fans have made of this shift over the years.
References
Annelli, J. Magic The Gathering The Visual Guide. DK Publishing
Li, M., Digges, K., Luhrs, A., Beyer D., & L'Etoile, C. (2017). Renewal
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82 The Cauldron of Eternity, by Tomasz Jedruszek for "Throne of Eldraine"
83 Agonizing Remorse, by Wishnu Tan for "Theros Beyond Death"
84 Dirge Bat, by Scott Canavan for "Ikoria: Lair of Behemoths"
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