The only problem with your theory is that the planes are their own realms of existence within the multiverse...they aren't a part of the same world in the sense that time traveling to a major event on one continent in the real world would drastically affect outcomes worldwide.
That's where you're wrong though. The existence of Planeswalkers and their ability to traverse the eternities shows that they DO share time and sometimes events between them. What happens on one world has a rippling effect if it involves a planeswalker, because they transcend the limitations of a single world.
We've seen that Tarkir itself will experience some form of change. We have no reason to believe that the title of Fate Reforged doesn't have a more intimate meaning, like say Sarkhan deciding that he doesn't like Bolas or Ugin in the end, and deciding to use his abilities as a dragonspeaker to form a coalition of dragons tasked with killing Ugin. Or at least, frightening Ugin into getting out of his head.
Fate Reforged has a promo pack released with it about Ugin's fate, and one of the objectives of the pre-release is to heal Ugin after the fight before he can die.
What if Bolas is just led to believe that he kills Ugin in the past as Sarkhan maybe finds a way to make it appear that Ugin is dead when he isn't? Kind of like how Ajani summoned a copy of Bolas to fight Bolas at the Conflux, couldn't Sarkhan make a clone of Ugin with Ugin's help? So that Bolas kills the clone, Bolas believes he killed the original, and his path of schemes of interplanar disruption never gets interrupted. We know Ugin was capable of withholding information from Bolas before, perhaps he will be able to withhold information about him being cloned. Or maybe Sarkhan finds a means to heal Ugin immediately upon Bolas' departure from Tarkir after their battle so that Ugin doesn't actually die of his wounds? I can only see Bolas believing himself victorious upon his departure as the means to preserve the current non-Tarkir timeline with minimal effects.
Bolas leaves, apparently, without finishing Ugin off, which is where Sarkhan can step in to change Ugin's fate, but even if Bolas's fate isn't changed, Ugin's is... which has an equal cascading effect because it presumes that Ugin never died, meaning he's still in play for the 1000 years between.
Of course, there's a potential to put Ugin in something like a medical coma which would give him the time to heal without triggering the cascading effect his influence would have on other worlds.
It is the planeswalkers themselves that transcend the planar boundaries, correct? Not the actual events within a single plane (unless you have a situation like Phyrexia, Rath and Dominaria)?
It is the planeswalkers themselves that transcend the planar boundaries, correct? Not the actual events within a single plane (unless you have a situation like Phyrexia, Rath and Dominaria)?
An event that involves a plansewalkers can potentially spill over into another plane. Events are not discrete things, really.
Sarkhan, in particular, has been a player in no less an event than freeing the Eldrazi. That affected Zendikar, of course, but it also caused Gideon to go to Ravnica in hopes of finding support and Sorin to go to Tarkin in hopes of finding Ugin. It isn't super clear how Jace and Chandra were affected but they were involved and later left.
Assuming that even with dragons around Sarkhan was still born and his spark still ignited (this sort of thing being a common conceit in time travel) he wouldn't have motivation to search for dragons so he'd never go to Alara and meet Bolas. That means events on at least Alara would have played out differently. Zendikar as well. Those two blocks have affected major players on every plane MTG has visited since (except Fiora I think).
Maybe Ugin's Nexus means that Ugin has paradox fixing magic like the Master did in that episode of Doctor Who?
You're missing the point...something like, say, a coup where say Surrak acts on the advice given by one of the ainok that covets the role of Dragonclaw and is killed. That ainok then does whatever to become the Dragonclaw for the Temur Frontier. Or Taigam's schemes. Neither of these have anything to do with something similarly small on Ravnica where a Gruul is framed for murdering a wojek, or on Kamigawa where the oni make a power play for control of Higure's ninjas. These are localized to their respective planes, and do not ripple outward affecting other planes. Similarly, dragging in one reality on Tarkir and cycling out another to a different Now won't have any impact on some goblins in Shiv trying to ambush a dragon to steal its treasure hoard.
The planeswalkers and Eldrazi are a different case entirely; macroscopic whereas everything I mentioned above is microscopic in the grand scheme of the Multiverse. Also, the TL;DR of my theory for the newcomers: Ugin was dead at the time of Zendikar's novel...healing him on Tarkir and bringing him to the present means he's presently alive on Tarkir and was still dead during Zendikar's novel.
You're missing the point...something like, say, a coup where say Surrak acts on the advice given by one of the ainok that covets the role of Dragonclaw and is killed. That ainok then does whatever to become the Dragonclaw for the Temur Frontier. Or Taigam's schemes. Neither of these have anything to do with something similarly small on Ravnica where a Gruul is framed for murdering a wojek, or on Kamigawa where the oni make a power play for control of Higure's ninjas. These are localized to their respective planes, and do not ripple outward affecting other planes.
Except that the existence of planeswalkers means they do, just through a very narrow passage. Anything that affects a planeswalker potentially affects the entire multiverse.
The planeswalkers and Eldrazi are a different case entirely; macroscopic whereas everything I mentioned above is microscopic in the grand scheme of the Multiverse. Also, the TL;DR of my theory for the newcomers: Ugin was dead at the time of Zendikar's novel...healing him on Tarkir and bringing him to the present means he's presently alive on Tarkir and was still dead during Zendikar's novel.
I do like this explanation since it prevents us from having a paradox but I thought it was established that Ugin being saved prevents dragons from going extinct on Tarkir in the first place.
Actually, it doesn't. Planeswalkers either see the events, or play a role in them directly. It doesn't alter the course of the plane in a natural sense (as a unified time stream, disrupted would, or as the Eldrazi would).
Yes, in Gargoyles you just can't possibly change history - everything you try to do in the past ends up being things that already happened. Griff went missing in WWII because he was brought to the present by Goliath, who did that because Griff went missing during WWII...
This is not what's going to happen in Fate Reforged, though. Look at the alternate art cards from the Ugin's Fate booster that are to be included in Fate Reforged pre-release events. The most relevant is attached with its KTK original version.
So, what are you saying? Are you agreeing with me, or not? I do not fully understand your post.
However, I am very pleased that you have seen Gargoyles, since that series is not well-remembered today (compared to such series as Thundercats or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example); it is always good to meet a fellow fan of Gargoyles.
Yes, in Gargoyles you just can't possibly change history - everything you try to do in the past ends up being things that already happened. Griff went missing in WWII because he was brought to the present by Goliath, who did that because Griff went missing during WWII...
This is not what's going to happen in Fate Reforged, though. Look at the alternate art cards from the Ugin's Fate booster that are to be included in Fate Reforged pre-release events. The most relevant is attached with its KTK original version.
So, what are you saying? Are you agreeing with me, or not? I do not fully understand your post.
I agree with you on how time travel works in Gargoyles. I disagree with you in how it relates to time travel in Magic world.
However, I am very pleased that you have seen Gargoyles, since that series is very obscure today (compared to such series as Thundercats or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles); it is always good to meet a fellow fan of Gargoyles.
When I read about all the Gargoyles spin-offs Greg Weisman wanted to produce...
Maybe the consequences of Sarkhan's time travel just create a new timeline or alternate reality while keeping the original in place, like Marvel and DC frequently does?
Maybe it's something similar to what happens in Donnie Darko?
(In Dragons of Tarkir, Sarhkan wakes up in his nice tent thinking everything was a dream, goes back to sleep, and then a giant Dragon falls on his head).
Ok first off the whole idea of people looking for 'Realistic Explanations' of time travel when 'Realistic Time travel' is just educated guesses on the subject since science demands provable information of which time travel has none is ridiculous. Then trying to apply them to a fictional universe where said science is largely ignored is laughably ridiculous.
Seriously the spark isn't explained scientifically at all yet you just accept that it works like it does, because it works like it does. Don't expect time travel to work like you or someone else told you its suppose to work in our universe.
Now a good way story wise way to deal with it without changing the story drastically is the medical comma explanation Barinellos mentioned. Though they could make it more of a recuperation that leaves him planebound in ghost form while slowly regaining a body until after the Eldrazi get released hence why he cant answer the summons along with Sorin during the events of the Zendikar story.
Many other events could still happen similar to how we know they did, just in a slightly different way.
Maybe Ajani still meets Sarkhan when he ends up in Jund. Well why Sarkhan leave Tarkir if dragons didn't go extict? Well remember Sarkhan felt a powerful dragon spirit when his spark ignited. Instead of not knowing what it is, Ugin reveals himself to Sarkhan and tasks him with being his envoy since he's still planebound in sprit form.
But why are the Eldrazi still freed if Sarkhan works for Ugin? Unlocking the Eye of Ugin had to be done with three planeswalkers, who they are wasn't important. So even if it still was Jace and Chandra the third walker could be anyone, someone we know or never heard of before. We even have an agent of Bolas from DotP-2014 that could take Sarkhans place, Ramaz. Chandra could even still be after Ramaz since she'd still find out later that it was him who tricked her into going to Zendikar.
There I just keep 99% of the story intact by minorly altering a few details.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOut of the ground,I rise to grace...W BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
The coma theory is one of my favorite explanations, though I saw one on gathering magic's storyline forum that said something like Sarkhan going into Ugin's mind and finding something like Jodah's field/mansion as mentioned in The Gathering Dark, except instead of a single structure, it is a memory of Tarkir's past where Sarkhan quests for the formula to the elemental storms that spawned the dragons. That theory used the presence of Ugin's spine on the Ugin's Nexus card, since its linked into the central nervous system, the brain and all. This doesn't quite work, since it seems Sarkhan's goal is to prevent Ugin from dying/heal Ugin.
In all the theories I have read on this, I am shocked at how many people believe Sarkhan's goal is the revive the dragons...thats just a side effect of him being almost forced to bring Ugin back...I mean Ugins voice seems to be literately making him go insane.
And the clear answer to this is that Ugin has told Sarkhan the time code and thus this adventure is protected by the time bubbles paradox resisting crumple zones....
I mean who is to say this trip is not one way for Sarkhan.
In all the theories I have read on this, I am shocked at how many people believe Sarkhan's goal is the revive the dragons...thats just a side effect of him being almost forced to bring Ugin back...I mean Ugins voice seems to be literately making him go insane.
And the clear answer to this is that Ugin has told Sarkhan the time code and thus this adventure is protected by the time bubbles paradox resisting crumple zones....
I mean who is to say this trip is not one way for Sarkhan.
It will only work if Sarkhan turns out to be his own grandfather.
But really, it comes down to the fact that so much of what went into Sarkhan, and what effect Sarkhan has had on other planes, is defined by how Tarkir is at present. Change that and... well...
Why do some people believe that Ugin's death led to the extinction of all dragons on Tarkir? And why do some people believe that his survival would lead to their resurrection? There currently is nothing to indicate that he is anything special compared to any other dragon on that plane (other than being a planeswalker, obviously) or that he is somehow the progenitor of all dragonkind on his plane.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Those who would trade their freedoms for security will have neither.”-Benjamin Franklin
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
Why do some people believe that Ugin's death led to the extinction of all dragons on Tarkir? And why do some people believe that his survival would lead to their resurrection? There currently is nothing to indicate that he is anything special compared to any other dragon on that plane (other than being a planeswalker, obviously) or that he is somehow the progenitor of all dragonkind on his plane.
Basically the story structure, corroborated by the card Crux of Fate.
The one thing Sarkhan went back in time to do (to shut Ugin up) was to keep him from dying.
What we know this causes, in one way or another, is that Dragons took over Tarkir instead of dying out.
To some degree, it is just the application of Occam's Razor, we just aren't sure about the specifics of the why or how.
When I first caught wind of the story elements of this block, I has a hunch they were going to pull a Dragonriders of Pern.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the book:
Dragons are used to fight "thread", an alien fungus that rains down from a passing planet every 200 years, but at the point the story starts, thread hasn't been seen for 400 years - and 400 years ago, 5 of the 6 major dragon nests disappeared without a trace, leaving just the sixth understaffed and under-supported nest to fight the thread on its return.
The protagonist realizes that she can use her dragon's teleportation abilities to travel through time, and goes back to the past and brings the five nests forward to the present
So they could maybe do something similar here: the timestream never actually changes, the reason the dragons went extinct is because most of them were pulled forward in time to now, where they proceed to set up house.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Moderator Helpdesk
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
They will not just 'bring dragons back'. History will not stay the same until what we saw in Khans.
The past will change. The history will be rewritten. We will see a Tarkir where the dragons never died out, where they were always present and influencing the world. This is well established.
Why do some people believe that Ugin's death led to the extinction of all dragons on Tarkir?
Planeswalker's Guide to Khans of Tarkir, part 1, introduction:
"Dragons once thrived on the plane of Tarkir. They spawned from mighty elemental storms, filled the sky with their destructive breath, and terrorized the five ancient warrior clans. But the dragons met their fate long ago. For many years, the clans fought a war against the dragons for their own survival, hoping for some way to gain an advantage in the struggle. At a crucial turning point more than a thousand years ago, the dragon tempests stopped coming, and no new dragons were spawned. Their numbers thinned, and the tide of the war changed."
Guide part 2, in the part about Sorin Markov:
"But the Lithomancer's whereabouts are unknown, and Sorin has not encountered Ugin for over a thousand years. In an attempt to track down Ugin, Sorin has traveled to Tarkir, where the spirit dragon formed an important part of the planar ecosystem.
Fate will not be kind to Sorin's quest. Although Ugin was native to Tarkir and a source of powerful magic on the plane, the dragon was killed long ago. It was none other than Nicol Bolas who defeated Ugin, leaving him to die in an icy chasm. With Ugin dead and the Lithomancer still missing, Sorin may not have a chance to trap the Eldrazi again."
It is not a far-fetched conclusion that the dragon storms stopped because of Ugin's death, or because of his fight against Nicol Bolas, somehow.
And why do some people believe that his survival would lead to their resurrection?
More like he not dieing or not even losing to Bolas will lead to them never becoming extinct to begin with. Again, this is clearly a change-the-past-to-fix-the-future time travel story, not a bring-something-from-the-past-to-the-future one.
There currently is nothing to indicate that he is anything special compared to any other dragon on that plane (other than being a planeswalker, obviously) or that he is somehow the progenitor of all dragonkind on his plane.
"the spirit dragon formed an important part of the planar ecosystem"
That wouldn't be about change though, which is the blocks theme is. And the dragons would be quickly defeated again. The clans now are stronger than they where in the past. And the Mardu, who already slew many of the dragons, would easily relish destroying them again just to prove how strong that are. All the clans would begrudgingly work together to stop an ancestral threat. Further more the art from the announcement shows a noticeable difference in the Mardu with the dragon and the Abzan. The Abzan still have dragon scale armor, but also have black robes and different looking helmets. The Mardu with the dragon have larger and spread complete 'flag wings' unlike the current tattered and broken looking 'flag wings' of the Khans.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
WOut of the ground,I rise to grace...W BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
I agree that this appears to be the route they're taking. I'm just not sure how they're going to reconcile the paradoxes brought up in this thread, especially the whole "Sarkhan would never have gone to Jund if his home plane had dragons" thing.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
My Moderator Helpdesk
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
I don't see why everyone believes the time travel thing affects the whole multiverse. Not only would it wreak havoc with everything they've tried to establish, but it's also extremely unnecessary. I would expect that only Tarkir will be affected by the rewritten timeline magics, everything else will stay as it is. I mean, the card wildice quoted above states that the event "rewrites its (Tarkir's) history" and not just "history", which implies it only affects Tarkir.
I don't know, it seems like people make this more complicated than it is.
Ok first off the whole idea of people looking for 'Realistic Explanations' of time travel when 'Realistic Time travel' is just educated guesses on the subject since science demands provable information of which time travel has none is ridiculous. Then trying to apply them to a fictional universe where said science is largely ignored is laughably ridiculous.
Seriously the spark isn't explained scientifically at all yet you just accept that it works like it does, because it works like it does. Don't expect time travel to work like you or someone else told you its suppose to work in our universe.
It's not about scientific accuracy, it's about expectation. When a character in a story throws a rock into a lake we expect the rock to sink to the ground, because we know how water, rocks, solid matter and gravity work. Unless we are shown or told any of these seemingly mundane things to have special properties, our suspension of disbelief would go down the drain if the rock would suddenly turn into a pink elephant and start singing disney songs.
Same with time travel. We do not know exactly how it works, but we can pretty much surmise how it likely would not work, because we know the basics of physics. Changing a thing in the past has a cascading effect, each minor difference between the timelines will spawn a dozen more, which in turn lead to more differences, so we know that the more time has passed, the two timelines diverge more and more from each other. The details as to wether there is exactly one timeline and all timetravel has already happened or wether there are multiple timeslines and whenever you go back in time you essentally create a new branch are unknown of course, but ignoring everything we know about how stuff works in order to justify something absurd is ridiculous.
They will not just 'bring dragons back'. History will not stay the same until what we saw in Khans.
The past will change. The history will be rewritten. We will see a Tarkir where the dragons never died out, where they were always present and influencing the world. This is well established.
More like he not dieing or not even losing to Bolas will lead to them never becoming extinct to begin with. Again, this is clearly a change-the-past-to-fix-the-future time travel story, not a bring-something-from-the-past-to-the-future one.
Again, that makes me return to my original question: why did WotC even chose to use such an element, at all? Have they not ever read books or seen movies that deal with time travel? Do they not understand the sheer horror of altering timelines? And why did they (and this is a hugely important question) even bother introducing the world of Tarkir, its people, and its culture, if they were intending to alter it later in the same block?! What was the point of all that effort and world-building, if it would be undone? That is my problem with the time-travel element of the story of this block; that it essentially erases the first set and makes it irrelevant.
"the spirit dragon formed an important part of the planar ecosystem"
I did not notice that; thank you very much. However, that makes me wish to ask another question: how could one being be so important to the ecosystem? That makes no sense; in an ecosystem, every being is equally important, so the idea of one being being more important than any other strains credibility, at least it does for me.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
“Those who would trade their freedoms for security will have neither.”-Benjamin Franklin
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
I don't see why everyone believes the time travel thing affects the whole multiverse. Not only would it wreak havoc with everything they've tried to establish, but it's also extremely unnecessary. I would expect that only Tarkir will be affected by the rewritten timeline magics, everything else will stay as it is. I mean, the card wildice quoted above states that the event "rewrites its (Tarkir's) history" and not just "history", which implies it only affects Tarkir.
I don't know, it seems like people make this more complicated than it is.
Because we're dealing with planeswalkers whose personal histories were tied up in Tarkir and if you change Tarkir's past, you change the events that flowed from them, including the planeswalkers who were involved in other events on other worlds entirely.
It's not like every world has its own timeline. The entire multiverse has a single timeline.
Again, that makes me return to my original question: why did WotC even chose to use such an element, at all? Have they not ever read books or seen movies that deal with time travel? Do they not understand the sheer horror of altering timelines? And why did they (and this is a hugely important question) even bother introducing the world of Tarkir, its people, and its culture, if they were intending to alter it later in the same block?! What was the point of all that effort and world-building, if it would be undone? That is my problem with the time-travel element of the story of this block; that it essentially erases the first set and makes it irrelevant.
Because they have in their possession the HANDWAVE WAND and the RETCON SWORD? Because it is not beneath them to use it nowadays, and it's scary that even MaRo has mentioned that there are a lot of things that can be learned from how the comics industry handle their stuff.
Seriously tho I have a feeling that it is somewhat connected to the impending change to the 2 block structure.... or worst case scenario, another "maneuvering by event".
I did not notice that; thank you very much. However, that makes me wish to ask another question: how could one being be so important to the ecosystem? That makes no sense; in an ecosystem, every being is equally important, so the idea of one being being more important than any other strains credibility, at least it does for me.
It could be that he's the one powering the dragon tempests (with his oldwalker powers and all), akin to how Serra maintained her realm and stuff.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Serra Stan - Angel Enthusiast - Garruk and Tyvar thirsty follower - Flavor and Art Enthusiast
Again, that makes me return to my original question: why did WotC even chose to use such an element, at all? Have they not ever read books or seen movies that deal with time travel? Do they not understand the sheer horror of altering timelines?
I mean, I guess that's a valid question to ask for any book/movie/story that uses time travel. No one really knows how it would work, but everyone has some kind of intuition that is apparently strong enough to argue vehemently for. No matter what hypothesis they end up following, they aren't going to be able to please everyone.
I don't know if that's a reason to never use time travel though. There are many popular tales involving time travel, with various degrees of technical explanation. I think enough (most?) people are willing to suspend disbelief that it's worthwhile for them to use this convenient plot device to tie the story in with their block structure.
And why did they (and this is a hugely important question) even bother introducing the world of Tarkir, its people, and its culture, if they were intending to alter it later in the same block?! What was the point of all that effort and world-building, if it would be undone? That is my problem with the time-travel element of the story of this block; that it essentially erases the first set and makes it irrelevant.
Change is meaningless without knowing what once was.
Private Mod Note
():
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Fate Reforged has a promo pack released with it about Ugin's fate, and one of the objectives of the pre-release is to heal Ugin after the fight before he can die.
Bolas leaves, apparently, without finishing Ugin off, which is where Sarkhan can step in to change Ugin's fate, but even if Bolas's fate isn't changed, Ugin's is... which has an equal cascading effect because it presumes that Ugin never died, meaning he's still in play for the 1000 years between.
Of course, there's a potential to put Ugin in something like a medical coma which would give him the time to heal without triggering the cascading effect his influence would have on other worlds.
An event that involves a plansewalkers can potentially spill over into another plane. Events are not discrete things, really.
Sarkhan, in particular, has been a player in no less an event than freeing the Eldrazi. That affected Zendikar, of course, but it also caused Gideon to go to Ravnica in hopes of finding support and Sorin to go to Tarkin in hopes of finding Ugin. It isn't super clear how Jace and Chandra were affected but they were involved and later left.
Assuming that even with dragons around Sarkhan was still born and his spark still ignited (this sort of thing being a common conceit in time travel) he wouldn't have motivation to search for dragons so he'd never go to Alara and meet Bolas. That means events on at least Alara would have played out differently. Zendikar as well. Those two blocks have affected major players on every plane MTG has visited since (except Fiora I think).
Maybe Ugin's Nexus means that Ugin has paradox fixing magic like the Master did in that episode of Doctor Who?
The planeswalkers and Eldrazi are a different case entirely; macroscopic whereas everything I mentioned above is microscopic in the grand scheme of the Multiverse. Also, the TL;DR of my theory for the newcomers: Ugin was dead at the time of Zendikar's novel...healing him on Tarkir and bringing him to the present means he's presently alive on Tarkir and was still dead during Zendikar's novel.
Except that the existence of planeswalkers means they do, just through a very narrow passage. Anything that affects a planeswalker potentially affects the entire multiverse.
I do like this explanation since it prevents us from having a paradox but I thought it was established that Ugin being saved prevents dragons from going extinct on Tarkir in the first place.
So, what are you saying? Are you agreeing with me, or not? I do not fully understand your post.
However, I am very pleased that you have seen Gargoyles, since that series is not well-remembered today (compared to such series as Thundercats or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for example); it is always good to meet a fellow fan of Gargoyles.
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
I agree with you on how time travel works in Gargoyles. I disagree with you in how it relates to time travel in Magic world.
When I read about all the Gargoyles spin-offs Greg Weisman wanted to produce...
Maybe it's something similar to what happens in Donnie Darko?
(In Dragons of Tarkir, Sarhkan wakes up in his nice tent thinking everything was a dream, goes back to sleep, and then a giant Dragon falls on his head).
Click the pic for more info.
Seriously the spark isn't explained scientifically at all yet you just accept that it works like it does, because it works like it does. Don't expect time travel to work like you or someone else told you its suppose to work in our universe.
Now a good way story wise way to deal with it without changing the story drastically is the medical comma explanation Barinellos mentioned. Though they could make it more of a recuperation that leaves him planebound in ghost form while slowly regaining a body until after the Eldrazi get released hence why he cant answer the summons along with Sorin during the events of the Zendikar story.
Many other events could still happen similar to how we know they did, just in a slightly different way.
Maybe Ajani still meets Sarkhan when he ends up in Jund. Well why Sarkhan leave Tarkir if dragons didn't go extict? Well remember Sarkhan felt a powerful dragon spirit when his spark ignited. Instead of not knowing what it is, Ugin reveals himself to Sarkhan and tasks him with being his envoy since he's still planebound in sprit form.
But why are the Eldrazi still freed if Sarkhan works for Ugin? Unlocking the Eye of Ugin had to be done with three planeswalkers, who they are wasn't important. So even if it still was Jace and Chandra the third walker could be anyone, someone we know or never heard of before. We even have an agent of Bolas from DotP-2014 that could take Sarkhans place, Ramaz. Chandra could even still be after Ramaz since she'd still find out later that it was him who tricked her into going to Zendikar.
There I just keep 99% of the story intact by minorly altering a few details.
BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
And the clear answer to this is that Ugin has told Sarkhan the time code and thus this adventure is protected by the time bubbles paradox resisting crumple zones....
I mean who is to say this trip is not one way for Sarkhan.
But really, it comes down to the fact that so much of what went into Sarkhan, and what effect Sarkhan has had on other planes, is defined by how Tarkir is at present. Change that and... well...
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
Basically the story structure, corroborated by the card Crux of Fate.
The one thing Sarkhan went back in time to do (to shut Ugin up) was to keep him from dying.
What we know this causes, in one way or another, is that Dragons took over Tarkir instead of dying out.
To some degree, it is just the application of Occam's Razor, we just aren't sure about the specifics of the why or how.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the book:
The protagonist realizes that she can use her dragon's teleportation abilities to travel through time, and goes back to the past and brings the five nests forward to the present
So they could maybe do something similar here: the timestream never actually changes, the reason the dragons went extinct is because most of them were pulled forward in time to now, where they proceed to set up house.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
They will not just 'bring dragons back'. History will not stay the same until what we saw in Khans.
The past will change. The history will be rewritten. We will see a Tarkir where the dragons never died out, where they were always present and influencing the world. This is well established.
Planeswalker's Guide to Khans of Tarkir, part 1, introduction:
"Dragons once thrived on the plane of Tarkir. They spawned from mighty elemental storms, filled the sky with their destructive breath, and terrorized the five ancient warrior clans. But the dragons met their fate long ago. For many years, the clans fought a war against the dragons for their own survival, hoping for some way to gain an advantage in the struggle. At a crucial turning point more than a thousand years ago, the dragon tempests stopped coming, and no new dragons were spawned. Their numbers thinned, and the tide of the war changed."
Guide part 2, in the part about Sorin Markov:
"But the Lithomancer's whereabouts are unknown, and Sorin has not encountered Ugin for over a thousand years. In an attempt to track down Ugin, Sorin has traveled to Tarkir, where the spirit dragon formed an important part of the planar ecosystem.
Fate will not be kind to Sorin's quest. Although Ugin was native to Tarkir and a source of powerful magic on the plane, the dragon was killed long ago. It was none other than Nicol Bolas who defeated Ugin, leaving him to die in an icy chasm. With Ugin dead and the Lithomancer still missing, Sorin may not have a chance to trap the Eldrazi again."
It is not a far-fetched conclusion that the dragon storms stopped because of Ugin's death, or because of his fight against Nicol Bolas, somehow.
More like he not dieing or not even losing to Bolas will lead to them never becoming extinct to begin with. Again, this is clearly a change-the-past-to-fix-the-future time travel story, not a bring-something-from-the-past-to-the-future one.
"the spirit dragon formed an important part of the planar ecosystem"
BAfter the lights go out on you, after your worthless life is through. I will remember how you scream...B
I agree that this appears to be the route they're taking. I'm just not sure how they're going to reconcile the paradoxes brought up in this thread, especially the whole "Sarkhan would never have gone to Jund if his home plane had dragons" thing.
Currently Playing:
Legacy: Something U/W Controlish
EDH Cube
Hypercube! A New EDH Deck Every Week(ish)!
I don't know, it seems like people make this more complicated than it is.
It's not about scientific accuracy, it's about expectation. When a character in a story throws a rock into a lake we expect the rock to sink to the ground, because we know how water, rocks, solid matter and gravity work. Unless we are shown or told any of these seemingly mundane things to have special properties, our suspension of disbelief would go down the drain if the rock would suddenly turn into a pink elephant and start singing disney songs.
Same with time travel. We do not know exactly how it works, but we can pretty much surmise how it likely would not work, because we know the basics of physics. Changing a thing in the past has a cascading effect, each minor difference between the timelines will spawn a dozen more, which in turn lead to more differences, so we know that the more time has passed, the two timelines diverge more and more from each other. The details as to wether there is exactly one timeline and all timetravel has already happened or wether there are multiple timeslines and whenever you go back in time you essentally create a new branch are unknown of course, but ignoring everything we know about how stuff works in order to justify something absurd is ridiculous.
Again, that makes me return to my original question: why did WotC even chose to use such an element, at all? Have they not ever read books or seen movies that deal with time travel? Do they not understand the sheer horror of altering timelines? And why did they (and this is a hugely important question) even bother introducing the world of Tarkir, its people, and its culture, if they were intending to alter it later in the same block?! What was the point of all that effort and world-building, if it would be undone? That is my problem with the time-travel element of the story of this block; that it essentially erases the first set and makes it irrelevant.
I did not notice that; thank you very much. However, that makes me wish to ask another question: how could one being be so important to the ecosystem? That makes no sense; in an ecosystem, every being is equally important, so the idea of one being being more important than any other strains credibility, at least it does for me.
“When the people fear the government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.”-Thomas Jefferson
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of its user.”-Theodore Roosevelt
“Patriotism means to stand by one's country; it does not mean to stand by one's president.”-Theodore Roosevelt
I mean why should the explanation be anything other than "A wizard did it".
Because we're dealing with planeswalkers whose personal histories were tied up in Tarkir and if you change Tarkir's past, you change the events that flowed from them, including the planeswalkers who were involved in other events on other worlds entirely.
It's not like every world has its own timeline. The entire multiverse has a single timeline.
Because they have in their possession the HANDWAVE WAND and the RETCON SWORD? Because it is not beneath them to use it nowadays, and it's scary that even MaRo has mentioned that there are a lot of things that can be learned from how the comics industry handle their stuff.
Seriously tho I have a feeling that it is somewhat connected to the impending change to the 2 block structure.... or worst case scenario, another "maneuvering by event".
It could be that he's the one powering the dragon tempests (with his oldwalker powers and all), akin to how Serra maintained her realm and stuff.
Serra Stan - Angel Enthusiast - Garruk and Tyvar thirsty follower - Flavor and Art Enthusiast
I mean, I guess that's a valid question to ask for any book/movie/story that uses time travel. No one really knows how it would work, but everyone has some kind of intuition that is apparently strong enough to argue vehemently for. No matter what hypothesis they end up following, they aren't going to be able to please everyone.
I don't know if that's a reason to never use time travel though. There are many popular tales involving time travel, with various degrees of technical explanation. I think enough (most?) people are willing to suspend disbelief that it's worthwhile for them to use this convenient plot device to tie the story in with their block structure.
Change is meaningless without knowing what once was.