Olivia was well characterised
Nahiri and Sorin displayed old walker attitudes
Nahiri (cold vengeance prepared) and Sorin (disdainful raw emotional [after losing his friend, daughter and home]) were both dangerous ... and I genuinely wasn't sure who would win
Overall, the whole arc of Sorin and Nahiri from mentor/mentee to nemeses with the parallels in tortured worlds and imprisonment has been great to watch... And I don't think it's over. I was surprised that Nahiri didn't sacrifice herself for redemption but this opens up further stories. Just as I assume Sorin will be freed eventually (maybe not until Innistrad 3), I assume Nahiri will seek out Ugin... Not necessarily to fight (though she may be hot-headed), and no doubt he will be suitably unimpressed with her actions and will school her... the only question then is what story will WOTC create that can re-use this rivalry.
For those who complain about the writing... You're entitled to do so but I think you expect too much. These storylines, characterisations and overall writing depth are consistent with the comic books that they have acknowledged as their inspirational storytelling medium and there have been some true gems ('the blight we were born for' as well as lowlights 'Nissa's arc during BTZ; just as comics range from Watchmen through to Civil War).
I am surprised this story came so early in the block as it means that the Gatewatch will have a larger role in story than I'd hoped... But this is the new Jacetus League world we live in (that was promised since Origins) and so the expectation fault is my own.
Lastly, while we all suspect the outcome of Emrakul ... WE DONT KNOW ... So I am quietly hoping that it will be something satisfying. (My biggest fear is a card reveal later this week that shows tamiyo doing a moon entrapment or some such that will remo e the excitement of finding out the story 'as it happens')
I am curious how Sorin neglected his vows? Also what has he done to be a villain? Is he a villain because he is a vampire and B aligned?
When Nahiri came to call upon Sorin to simply check to see that the Eldrazi containment measures were in place, he refused to go. True, he was weakened at said time and true, he did check up on things later on, but his motives have often been self-preservation or preservation of his interests over those of others. At a minimum it makes him an anti-hero. I'd argue imprisoning Nahiri in the Helvault and leaving her there for a thousand years, killing off Avacyn when there was at least a way he could attempt to cure her and on several occasions sacrificing numerous unnamed people for his own ends tends to be villainous. We just haven't had a plot with Sorin as the antagonist, yet.
She came by, told him they were testing the locks but she checked and fixed them. He was concerned until she mentioned she made sure they were fixed. He was going to go with her, but not at that moment. He had just woken up from being passed out due to how much energy the work he had done took out of him. He did not refuse her or refuse to live up to what he had promised, he just wanted to regain his strength and make sure everyone he had just done was working before he left. There was no immediate threat as it had been dealt with. Why not blame Nahiri more for hibernating for 1000 years? Her sitting around in stone ignoring her duties for a 1000 years gets a pass but him wanting to wait a day or a week to go by and admire her handy work is the most unfathomable evil ever?
He imprisoned Nahiri because she refused to stop assaulting him and Avacyn. Even after telling her to go away. It was at a point where he was either going to possibly die, her die, or lock her up. There is also no evidence of Sorin being able to selectively release Nahiri or even release her at all. B can't destroy artifacts. Not sure why people harp on the time spent in there and that its on Sorin. Sorin didn't even know Avacyn was in there so he probably can't get any signal from in there. People seemed to have taken the point of Nahiri calling out and thinking he simply ignored it but there is no evidence he heard it.
Nahiri had twisted Avacyn so much that she even said if Sorin tried to fix her she was still going to revert back to this state. Nahiri saw everything and everyone on this plane as evil and she twisted Avacyn to see it the same way. Sorin wanted to fix her but realised it was not an option.
I tried to argue some of these points many times through many topics, but you really did a wonderful job of summarizing how Sorin was not exactly as purposely evil as people are saying.
Throwing a whole plane under the bus to get at one guy, the real life equivalent of skinning his children alive and forcing him to watch, is red? Not black?
Well, okay.
No, the real life equivalent is fire bombing a corrupted ghetto filled with murders, rapists and drug lords, because the king pin pissed you off. That's how Nahiri sees it.
It's not even that. From her point of view, Emrakul is invincible and would have moved onto another plane after she was done with Zendikar. It is being given the choice between destroying a corrupted ghetto filled with murderers, rapists, and drug lords whose kingpin destroyed your hometown, killed your family, and tortured you for years and destroying an innocent city that had done nothing wrong. It is ****ed up, but if she views Emrakul as indestructible and inevitable, she is not doing anything evil on the cosmic scale.
While today's story certainly wasn't perfect, it was of a much higher caliber than the BFZ and Oath stories. I actually enjoyed it and have fewer gripes about it than some of the low-quality, rushed stories that made up BFZ and Oath. While these weekly serials are a medium that doesn't lend itself well to storytelling the way a novel does, I didn't notice as much. The pacing and energy-infused writing were refreshing after enduring the Nissa boo-hooing and mindless sural-whipping of Gideon (seriously, I was bothered that Gideon learned heiromancy from Hixus and the writers never bothered to employ that characteristic of Gideon once in the entirety of the BFZ block's stories). The action was more varied than simple sural whipping and jets of fire. Furthermore, Nahiri's motivations were clearer in this story, leaving little doubt about her thought-out schemes and cold, calculating revenge plan.
I'm really curious as to whether Nahiri will become a vampire now after receiving Sorin's bite. She could even become a Mardu walker in future sets...
I'm really curious as to whether Nahiri will become a vampire now after receiving Sorin's bite. She could even become a Mardu walker in future sets...
She can't. Innistradi vampirism isn't transfered through a simple bite, it requires a bit more than that. First, you have to have the blood of an existing vampire introduced into your system. As far as I'm aware, Sorin did not mix any of his blood with Nahiri's. Once that happens, you must then drink from the vampire who sired you within one month, or else you kick the bucket. She would need to return to Markov Manor to get a drink from her newly made statue, which seems unlikely. As cool as it would be, it probably won't happen, especially since Wizards made no mention of the requisite conditions in this story, to use as foreshadowing.
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Vorthos Cartography - Check out my completed maps of Zendikar and Innistrad!
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
Nahiri didn't do this because Sorin was corrupt or evil. She did it because he hurt her. She felt betrayed. She was angry. There was nothing white about her motives. Nothing.
Edit: also nothing is good or evil on a cosmic scale.
It's entirely reasonable to consider a person's methods when considering color. If you don't you basically say that having particular brands of magic be particular colors isn't important. It's like saying that Necromancy doesn't need to be black or fire magic doesn't need to be red.
I honestly don't get this desire so many seem to have for Sorin to be another good guy. This darker, more ruthless Sorin we've seen now is the Sorin we used to get in the cards, and the Sorin I always wanted to see in the story. He wasn't an anti-hero like Liliana, or some morally-conflicted vampire softfoot who really wasn't so bad on the inside. He looked like this:
And he had quotes like this:
"Cherish these last moments. Though your miserable life has come to nothing, I have given it a magnificent end."
"I have seen planes leveled and all life rendered to dust. It brought no pleasure, even to a heart as dark as mine."
"I have seen entire civilizations rise and fall. You mortals are but dust to me."
I liked the thought of a Sorin who, depending on the setting or situation at hand and how much skin he had in the game, could either be a pragmatic champion for the greater good or a ruthless villain who scatters the heroes like sand.
Is he callous or vindictive? He was an oldwalker. Most of them were various shades of gray to outright black. Ask Frayalise about vindictiveness--and she was one of the good Planeswalkers.
Been mulling this over and I think this plot has single-handedly destroyed any interest I had in Magic's storyline.
Sorin before SOI was long-term minded, patient, pragmatic, pretty unemotional, generally selfish but aware of the importance of balance and the need to keep the big things on an even keel - even if only to preserve the things that he personaly cared about. None of that was villainous. He was at worst ambivalent. I could relate to that. I find it hard to get too emotionally invested in others. I'm a bit reclusive; introverted. There are a few things that matter to me, everything else is noise. I want selfish pleasure but I understand duty. I'll be turns indulge and deprive myself. I'm grey, like Sorin. Or at least, like he was.
But then we get SOI Sorin: short-sighted, stupid, tetchy, petulant, easily provoked, quick to give up on the only stuff he actually cared about (Avacyn, Innistrad). Seriously - who in Wizards' creative department hated the character so much that they wanted to ruin every single good thing about him? It's like some sadist went "I detest this guy. Let's utterly destroy his character. Then, let's destroy everything he cares about - in fact, we'll make him destroy some of it himself. And then let's give him the most ignominious end we can come up with." Has any character been so royally shafted by a depiction and storyline in the history of Magic?
All the stuff that I related to before has been conspicuously absent in this block; a load of contrary crappy traits have been written in. And after all that, he still loses. He plays the fall guy to every ridiculous plot contrivance to allow Nahiri to win. Why would pre-SOI Sorin rush to destroy Avacyn? Ignore the big threat of Emrakul in the rush for petty vengeance to fight Nahiri in Markov Manor instead - a place he knew full well she had total mastery over? I thought he was supposed to hold grudges for centuries? Why the haste to give away such a huge tactical advantage? Even then, why, when his magic was turned aside (because 'leylines' - the new 'because Bolas') and he was clearly at a major disadvantage did he carry on? Where was his long-term thinking, his patience, his pragmatism? He was just blindly, emotionally, stupidly rash here.
So yeah - someone decided he'd be the fall guy for this block and character consistency be damned. Well, for me, Sorin and Elspeth were the only two planeswalkers I cared about, and Sorin the only one I could relate to. I don't expect anyone else to give a toss, but *my* representation amongst the PW cast is finished. Even though Sorin isn't technically dead, pre-SOI Sorin certainly is. What's left is a neutered, toothless shell of him, bereft of everything that previously appealed. And since I couldn't give a rat's ass for any of the Gatewatch, I can't see what the Magic story has left to offer me. So, though no-one else will care, I'm done. There's no point in me investing my energy in this mythos any more when it can so casually be upended for some sadist's whim.
I know that feel. I was telling friends that if Emrakul was involved with SOI block, I was going to sit out the next block to recover my interest (over-exposure of Eldrazi/Gatewatch). While I don't 100% agree with everything you wrote, I do feel we, and others most likely, fell prey to a desire for deep, intricate stories, without realizing that these stories are slave to marketing and profit, and less so the marketing being driven by story. When the level of corporate investment in story is at the level of a weekly short story blogger (today's story was about 9 Word pages long, with typos and grammar issues; would take about an hour to write at 75 words a minute, two hours at 37 words per minute, etc., so not really a gigantic investment of time), you can tell really solid and masterful storytelling isn't a primary focus. They're not making money off of the stories by themselves, so absent the profit motive, it's a pretty much benevolent gift given to people who care about the story. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate that they're keeping the story aspects of the game alive, and Creative and the writers may well honestly and truly care deeply about plot and characters and tales. But we're in a new world of story and I highly doubt we're ever going back to actual books.
The best I can offer is to advise not to expect greatness from any weekly installment. Don't go in expecting any planar story to be interesting and well thought-out. That way you won't be disappointed when it isn't, and will be pleasantly surprised when it is. Some may justifiably feel SOI was solid. I felt parts of it were, but not most of it. Some may also feel it was an absolute disappointment. After BFZ block and this end of SOI, I'm personally going to assume disappointment as a protective mechanism. And more likely than not, I'll still engage in upcoming block stories. I'm a glutton. And a pessimist, it seems.
But I'm still Team Tibalt. Where was this guy?? Where was the pit to hell in all of this??
I've already understood for quite long that Sorin has never been on the Wizards's list of plot-relevant characters ever (which again begs the question why they bothered making him at all, but that's pointless to ask now), but I must say this last article of him still hurts as hell. I wish I live near you so that I can share some popcorns of grief with you, brother.
And yes, I agree wholeheartedly to the advise of "not expecting greatness of stories" anymore. Considering the screw-up of the Eldrazi and their three jailors, especially in the past year around the SOi storyline, I have lost all faith that the Wizards has the slightest capability of creating an engaging long-term character/plot anymore. I admit I might not quit Magic; I'm a gamer at heart, and I guess I do concede that as long as the cards sell, the stries don't matter; but the whole SOI block plot fiasco really has killed all my hopes of any slightly great world setting, good characterizations and deep stories anymore.
I honestly don't get this desire so many seem to have for Sorin to be another good guy. This darker, more ruthless Sorin we've seen now is the Sorin we used to get in the cards, and the Sorin I always wanted to see in the story. He wasn't an anti-hero like Liliana, or some morally-conflicted vampire softfoot who really wasn't so bad on the inside. He looked like this:
And he had quotes like this:
"Cherish these last moments. Though your miserable life has come to nothing, I have given it a magnificent end."
"I have seen planes leveled and all life rendered to dust. It brought no pleasure, even to a heart as dark as mine."
"I have seen entire civilizations rise and fall. You mortals are but dust to me."
I liked the thought of a Sorin who, depending on the setting or situation at hand and how much skin he had in the game, could either be a pragmatic champion for the greater good or a ruthless villain who scatters the heroes like sand.
Is he callous or vindictive? He was an oldwalker. Most of them were various shades of gray to outright black. Ask Frayalise about vindictiveness--and she was one of the good Planeswalkers.
I don't want a good Sorin, I just think that in this block people are exaggerating his evilness and that he was poorly depicted most of the time. Nonetheless, his "I never asked for your trust, child. Only your obedience." and the whole fight/interaction with Avacyn were quite in line with his cards.
Really late for the party here. I will share my impressions of the story though.
First let's start with the usual: the writing was terrible. Everytime I see someone saying "what a great read, best writing yet, etc." I feel inclined to ask the person why they feel that is the case. The author didn't know how to write stories, I'm not exaggerating. He was terrible at description, sometimes overdoing it and sometimes just laying things in a confusing way. Moreover, he writes as if he is imagining an action scene from a Transformers movie turned into paper. That is not how you write action scenes, it just becomes overly descriptive, over the top and incredibly childish. The writing was a merge of terrible "lines of impact" ("I got bigger teeth than you"), unnecessary pieces os story ("this vampire has a sword with a twisted blade that meets itself in th... and she is dead") and plot conveniences ("you think your magic is going to work against me? Hah! Think again! Leylines and stuff! Yeah, rock and roll"). There are objective criteria to evaluate writing. This article was awful and this is not really subjective. Sorry for being bitter here, but I can't really understand this. Please WoTC, hire a real writer for these stories, this work is so amateurish that makes me cringe (I take it personal because I write as well and nobody pays me a damn for it, and even then I try to make it look better than this).
Alright, moving on to more important stuff: I'm glad the story was more focused on Nahiri versus Sorin showdown without Olivia stepping in as someone had mentioned in the other thread. This way felt more personal and appropriate. Nahiri winning was a little bit pushed, and if you consider the leyline stuff it was considerably more pushed, but I will take it. I will say that I disagree a bit with the assessment people are making over Sorin's change of character. Yes, he was reckless, but millenia old beings are not completely above emotions. Nahiri's plan made Sorin kill his greatest creation so far and end his home plan. If there is something that would make Sorin act careless about, I would say that qualifies. I don't think he could have saved or helped Avacyn, she was beyond repair (as Bruna and Gisela are now). I actually think that comes to show Sorin making a huge mistake, and paying deeply for it. If he survives this he will probably learn his lesson and be more cautious next time, maybe even elaborating a proper revenge plan to get back at Nahiri.
I will also add that I disagree on the part that the walkers motives were shallow or two-dimensional, at least in part. I think they suffered a bit from not having enough story time, that I agree, but Nahiri's revenge plot felt very apropriate overall and I'm not at all bothered by the fact that she doesn't have a plan for Emrakul. I said that, if she didn't, then she wouldn't be white at all (more on that later), but I can get behind her motivations. Sorin was overcome by emotions in a way that I think only Nahiri could've reached him. She made him destroy his biggest creation in Avacyn and doomed his plan. For all that Sorin knows from the eldrazi it is VERY understandable that he would say "my plane is doomed". That is what being a pragmatic person is, and Sorin is very pragmatic. So, in the end, both characters feel much like real characters: one is justifiably mad for revenge and the other, despite being usually cautious, was overcome by emotions when the things that he held dearest in the world were destroyed. Honestly if Sorin acted in a cold, calculated way after all that then I wouldn't be able to take his characterization seriously. Being unbelievably cold in the face of overwhelming adversity is a trait of Ob Nixilis, not a trait of Sorin, and I really think here they did a good job in making that clear.
The Nahiri plot for this story is really not bad. I think in terms of general idea is much more satisfying than the usual gatewatch nonsense. The writing though, particular in Sorin's first story and in strongly in this last one, was lacking. WoTC may have all the good ideas in the world, but if they don't improve the writing every single story will suffer. What worries me, and here I agree with Jay, is the next part of the plot: Emrakul being defeated. Knowing that Nahiri never had a plan and that the gatewatch stumbled again in a way to seal/defeat a titan is very very annoying. I will say that I can stand it a little, because it wasn't taken completely out of nowhere: it WAS established that the helvaut had sealing capacities and that it was a part of the Moon. I honestly don't care more about the fate of the eldrazi though, WoTC has shown to me that they can't handle their characterization and that they don't grasp the concepts of "Ancient Ones". Let them die. That way we can have more compelling villains on the upcoming stories. Maybe because I don't care more about the eldrazi I'm not as bothered as I should be with the "moon convenience issue" in the plot, since it doesn't look as bad to finally get rid of eldrazi and know that there was a small setup coming from past blocks.
Last, but not least: Nahiri is not white. If you want to say that she is because "lithomancy" is white I will point out to you that red also can manipulate rock, probably even better than white can, so she could've been full fledged monored as far as I'm concerned. She was probably kept in white due to her origins: she was a kor and kor are a white-associated tribe in Zendikar. Let me clarify: white can do evil things for sure, but not in the way she did. She is killing a whole plane, bystanders included, to get revenge at ONE SINGLE GUY. She doesn't think everyone in the plane is evil, she just thinks that the plane as a whole reminds her too much of Sorin and she knows Innistrad is one of the few things Sorin actually gives a damn about. That is not, I repeat: THAT IS NOT, white motivation. White doesn't deliver its brand of justice to people because 'these guys are treasured by that one single dude that I'm actually mad at'. She could have a hint of white MAYBE if it was established somewhere in her stories that she thinks everyone in Innistrad is a monster just like Sorin, but I don't remember one single instance of that being the case. Besides, she spent A LOT of time in Innistrad, she would've seen that there were good people in there, people that were not evil and that didn't look like Sorin at all. She is more red than anything, with clear hints of black in her egotistical way of doing things, focused solely on herself and in the results of her scheming. Nahiri could show up as mardu in the future, but I think WoTC will keep her as boros to show that "white can be evil", even though she didn't depict the white way of doing evil.
As a last note: if I recall correctly Heliod killed Eslpeth because she deemed her, and only her, a threat to Theros. His experience with Xenagos taught him that planeswalkers can be dangerous creatures and he couldn't afford to risk her becoming a threat. That is why he murdered her I believe, not out of jealousy, not out of spite, but for the greater good, or so he believed. That is white brand of evil: causing harm to seek balance and harmony, not revenge.
Her disdain for the cultures and equating Innistrad with Sorin - which she views as a vile monster - seems to indicate that she does view Innistrad as evil. That it reminds her of what she considers to be an expression of evil validates this assertion.
Heliod was well established previously to have an irrational jealousy of Elspeth. Sure, his motives weren't entirely selfish, but a defining character trait of his is how petty and self-righteous is he. He literally started a war becaue Purphoros wouldn't bow to him.
So I am a day late to responding to the story because quite honestly, my reaction to the story was "meh" after I got over just how much the story had diverged from the Art Book, which is something I will come back to at the end of my post.
The biggest issue is that this story has been building for a long time. One could argue ever since Sorin showed up on Zendikar... alone... back when we knew he worked with two others whose whereabouts we knew nothing of, and then the Uncharted Realms that took us through Nahiri's life from post sealing to now. It fell kind of flat because in most of these things expectations usually overshadow reality. However, I am definitely holding this against Wizards because they managed to overcome this once already, in this set's story's no less, with the reveal of Emrakul actually beating expectations despite almost everyone seeing it coming.
Here's what I liked: we got the confrontation, and most parts of the confrontation itself. I'm not too sure how I feel about Nahiri having an army of loyal cultist or have figured out how to wrangle Eldrazi without them turning on her. I can buy that she uber leveled her lithomancy skills because she spent 1-2 years straight applying that knowledge to summon Emrakul, so it makes sense to me that her skills would grow, especially with her fleeting sanity to have her focus her skills on raw power rather than detail oriented. Also means that she had plenty of time to not master Innistrad's leylines, but also warp them to her ends (which was the entire purpose of the cryptolith network to begin with).
Most of the time one army vs. another army in a story doesn't work for me that well in writing. This story is not the exception... except once, and that's the moment when Sorin and Nahiri first see each other out in the battle. That worked more because it was the moment where the story shifted from army v. army to Sorin v. Nahiri. And them going at it worked out well enough. Well enough that I think that it would have been better if Wizards Creative had just dumped the armies and just had Sorin vs. Nahiri from the get go. It's why Sorin v. Avacyn worked: there wasn't any distractions (except when there were) to take away from the fact under the battle was two character moments. This was not two character moments. Sorin and Nahiri had those moments long before this story. This story was the consequences of those character moments.
Which leads us into the Art Book. First and foremost, this is as a definitive refutation of my past argument that Wizards's has the story set in stone long before we get to said story. I'm sure there's overarching points they can't back out of, like say Emrakul appears, but someone had a last minute change of heart on Nahiri's character arc and swerved left long after the art book had been sent to the printer. And it's a shame because I feel the Art Book ending would have worked better.
Second, it changes this story from the consequences story to another character moment. Nahiri reveals that she has a sense of justice under all that revenge and Sorin stamps out the last of it by refusing to put himself in Nahiri's shoes (even if he has no reason to trust her), and his callousness even turns Olivia who doesn't like him at all anyway. And through his inaction Sorin manages to crush what little hope Nahiri didn't know she even had left. It completes the her arc to villain in a way that I personally like.
Third,
it better covers up the fact that Emrakul is going to be stopped through the power of coincidences as Jay noted. There's no escaping that this story arc is coincidentown because Jace showed up at the exact time when Nahiri's plan came to a head after just jumping on the Eldrazi problem, but it does make the fact that Nahiri chose Innistrad when Innistrad has a prison already in place much more appreciative.
As an aside, I think I'm okay with either outcome of Olivia. On the one hand, I can appreciate her self-preservation coming to Nahiri's aid to force her to stop Emrakul and that resulting in her death at Sorin's hand. On the other hand, since Nahiri's ultimatum to Sorin was edited out, it makes sense that with the battle lost, Olivia would crown herself Queen of post-Iceberg Titanic Lord of Innistrad and go down partying. As an interesting aside, the card Olivia, Mobilized for War makes much more sense for this set than the last one. She's gone mad and grants things haste because what's driving that madness is the knowledge there will be no tomorrow.
To conclude, I reiterate the story itself though definitely needed something because as a grand confrontation that's been building for years, going "meh" or "eh" should not be the overall response.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Really late for the party here. I will share my impressions of the story though.
First let's start with the usual: the writing was terrible. Everytime I see someone saying "what a great read, best writing yet, etc." I feel inclined to ask the person why they feel that is the case. The author didn't know how to write stories, I'm not exaggerating. He was terrible at description, sometimes overdoing it and sometimes just laying things in a confusing way. Moreover, he writes as if he is imagining an action scene from a Transformers movie turned into paper. That is not how you write action scenes, it just becomes overly descriptive, over the top and incredibly childish. The writing was a merge of terrible "lines of impact" ("I got bigger teeth than you"), unnecessary pieces os story ("this vampire has a sword with a twisted blade that meets itself in th... and she is dead") and plot conveniences ("you think your magic is going to work against me? Hah! Think again! Leylines and stuff! Yeah, rock and roll"). There are objective criteria to evaluate writing. This article was awful and this is not really subjective. Sorry for being bitter here, but I can't really understand this. Please WoTC, hire a real writer for these stories, this work is so amateurish that makes me cringe (I take it personal because I write as well and nobody pays me a damn for it, and even then I try to make it look better than this).
Alright, moving on to more important stuff: I'm glad the story was more focused on Nahiri versus Sorin showdown without Olivia stepping in as someone had mentioned in the other thread. This way felt more personal and appropriate. Nahiri winning was a little bit pushed, and if you consider the leyline stuff it was considerably more pushed, but I will take it. I will say that I disagree a bit with the assessment people are making over Sorin's change of character. Yes, he was reckless, but millenia old beings are not completely above emotions. Nahiri's plan made Sorin kill his greatest creation so far and end his home plan. If there is something that would make Sorin act careless about, I would say that qualifies. I don't think he could have saved or helped Avacyn, she was beyond repair (as Bruna and Gisela are now). I actually think that comes to show Sorin making a huge mistake, and paying deeply for it. If he survives this he will probably learn his lesson and be more cautious next time, maybe even elaborating a proper revenge plan to get back at Nahiri.
I will also add that I disagree on the part that the walkers motives were shallow or two-dimensional, at least in part. I think they suffered a bit from not having enough story time, that I agree, but Nahiri's revenge plot felt very apropriate overall and I'm not at all bothered by the fact that she doesn't have a plan for Emrakul. I said that, if she didn't, then she wouldn't be white at all (more on that later), but I can get behind her motivations. Sorin was overcome by emotions in a way that I think only Nahiri could've reached him. She made him destroy his biggest creation in Avacyn and doomed his plan. For all that Sorin knows from the eldrazi it is VERY understandable that he would say "my plane is doomed". That is what being a pragmatic person is, and Sorin is very pragmatic. So, in the end, both characters feel much like real characters: one is justifiably mad for revenge and the other, despite being usually cautious, was overcome by emotions when the things that he held dearest in the world were destroyed. Honestly if Sorin acted in a cold, calculated way after all that then I wouldn't be able to take his characterization seriously. Being unbelievably cold in the face of overwhelming adversity is a trait of Ob Nixilis, not a trait of Sorin, and I really think here they did a good job in making that clear.
The Nahiri plot for this story is really not bad. I think in terms of general idea is much more satisfying than the usual gatewatch nonsense. The writing though, particular in Sorin's first story and in strongly in this last one, was lacking. WoTC may have all the good ideas in the world, but if they don't improve the writing every single story will suffer. What worries me, and here I agree with Jay, is the next part of the plot: Emrakul being defeated. Knowing that Nahiri never had a plan and that the gatewatch stumbled again in a way to seal/defeat a titan is very very annoying. I will say that I can stand it a little, because it wasn't taken completely out of nowhere: it WAS established that the helvaut had sealing capacities and that it was a part of the Moon. I honestly don't care more about the fate of the eldrazi though, WoTC has shown to me that they can't handle their characterization and that they don't grasp the concepts of "Ancient Ones". Let them die. That way we can have more compelling villains on the upcoming stories. Maybe because I don't care more about the eldrazi I'm not as bothered as I should be with the "moon convenience issue" in the plot, since it doesn't look as bad to finally get rid of eldrazi and know that there was a small setup coming from past blocks.
Last, but not least: Nahiri is not white. If you want to say that she is because "lithomancy" is white I will point out to you that red also can manipulate rock, probably even better than white can, so she could've been full fledged monored as far as I'm concerned. She was probably kept in white due to her origins: she was a kor and kor are a white-associated tribe in Zendikar. Let me clarify: white can do evil things for sure, but not in the way she did. She is killing a whole plane, bystanders included, to get revenge at ONE SINGLE GUY. She doesn't think everyone in the plane is evil, she just thinks that the plane as a whole reminds her too much of Sorin and she knows Innistrad is one of the few things Sorin actually gives a damn about. That is not, I repeat: THAT IS NOT, white motivation. White doesn't deliver its brand of justice to people because 'these guys are treasured by that one single dude that I'm actually mad at'. She could have a hint of white MAYBE if it was established somewhere in her stories that she thinks everyone in Innistrad is a monster just like Sorin, but I don't remember one single instance of that being the case. Besides, she spent A LOT of time in Innistrad, she would've seen that there were good people in there, people that were not evil and that didn't look like Sorin at all. She is more red than anything, with clear hints of black in her egotistical way of doing things, focused solely on herself and in the results of her scheming. Nahiri could show up as mardu in the future, but I think WoTC will keep her as boros to show that "white can be evil", even though she didn't depict the white way of doing evil.
As a last note: if I recall correctly Heliod killed Eslpeth because she deemed her, and only her, a threat to Theros. His experience with Xenagos taught him that planeswalkers can be dangerous creatures and he couldn't afford to risk her becoming a threat. That is why he murdered her I believe, not out of jealousy, not out of spite, but for the greater good, or so he believed. That is white brand of evil: causing harm to seek balance and harmony, not revenge.
Ashiok, the problem with your analysis is that you are coming from a premise that is false: that emotions and motivations are the only aspects that dictate color in a Mtg character. That is not true. Nahiri is RW because she is a white mage, user of white magic, and is red because of her motivations and emotions. It is not NEEDED for her to have a White motivation in her actions in the SOI-EMN arc just because her card is partially White. She is White for other reasons, not because of, specifically, her plot against Sorin and her emotions and motivations involving him.
I'm not holding MaRo in any respect as far as character storytelling. Have you ever read any of his columns where he embodies colors and give them voices? They always sounds like 8-years-old in-fighting. He has yet to impress me with any sort of depth.
We're talking about someone who protected a plane for thousand of years. She has motivation against Sorin/Innistrad, but I fail to see justifications for ongoing villainy.
I think in whatever block Nahiri ends up in next, she will be a bit of a lost soul, haunted by what was done to her and what she'd done. In that way, I can see her being a villain in the way that, say, Dr. Octopus was in Spider-Man 2. Villains after all, comprise a wide spectrum, not a black and white flat one.
Hit the nail on the head, StarlightWizard. People always jump through hoops to define color identities based on ideology rather than methodology. Both factor in, of course, but methodology comes first and is absolute in determining their in-game color, and the ideology stems from that. A red mage will never shoot a jet of water. Simple as
From today's story: "They called her the Harbinger. They weren't wrong, these fanatics and cultists, and they had followed her here, growing in number as she set about her work on Innistrad. They were devoted to her, and they reminded Nahiri that the only thing worth saving in this whole damned world was her revenge."
More broadly, I disagree with your claim that "white can do evil things for sure, but not in the way she did". There are different types of White villains. Some White villains are tyrants (Heliod, Konda, the Azorius, the Orzhov), some are collectivists (Elesh Norn, the Selesnya), some are extremists who go too far in their crusade against real or perceived evils (Avacyn and her church after being corrupted, the Boros), some are the loyal servants of an evil person or a destructive force (Ayli and her Eternal Pilgrims, General Takeno). A bigot who murders people that belong to a group he considers evil (like vampires on Innistrad, or magic users on Kaladesh) could be considered a White villain. So could a Punisher-style vigilante who goes around killing criminals without any concern for innocent civilians who get caught in the crossfire.
All the three types of villains you mentioned (tyrants, collectivists and 'extremists') are one in the same when it comes to purposes: they believe their cause/ideals are right and just, therefore the actions that they take are justified. Heliod wants Theros to remain as it is, in a place that he views as ideal, same goes for Elesh Norn or the so called extremists. They differ in the means they utilized, not in the rationale. So, I still disagree with the 'multiple types of white villains' when it comes to philosophy.
I don't know the complete work of the punisher, but I'm well aware that, in general, the character doesn't kill innocent people. Debates of the Punisher character are not wheter or not is correct to murder innocents to get rid of a perceived greater evil, but rather whether or not killing is the righteous thing to do. When you kill someone you give up on the chance of their redemption, you abandon second chances and mercy, that's what the Punisher character is about. As far as I know (but I admit that this might be not true to all of his stories), the punisher does not murder innocent people to get rid of the bad guys. That's completely innacurate with his M.O.
Her disdain for the cultures and equating Innistrad with Sorin - which she views as a vile monster - seems to indicate that she does view Innistrad as evil. That it reminds her of what she considers to be an expression of evil validates this assertion.
Heliod was well established previously to have an irrational jealousy of Elspeth. Sure, his motives weren't entirely selfish, but a defining character trait of his is how petty and self-righteous is he. He literally started a war becaue Purphoros wouldn't bow to him.
"Seems to indicate" is not good enough for me. It might be for you, no problems there, but I think in terms of philosophy Nahiri is lacking a good deal of white. Once again: she had plenty of time to know Innistrad and its people, she certainly saw good, common people in there and decided to murder them all anyway.
Spock would probably be a white/blue character, and his philosophy "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" reflects white very well. If it was a choice of murdering one hundred innocent people to save ten thousand, a white villain would do the murdering, and I would say that he is white. Nahiri is doing the opposite: she is murdering the thousands to get rid of the one, that is not white at all. A character like Gideon, on the other hand, would not do the murder, and it would struggle to find a third option even if it meant self-sacrifice. It is the Watchmen ending debate all over again.
Ashiok, the problem with your analysis is that you are coming from a premise that is false: that emotions and motivations are the only aspects that dictate color in a Mtg character. That is not true. Nahiri is RW because she is a white mage, user of white magic, and is red because of her motivations and emotions. It is not NEEDED for her to have a White motivation in her actions in the SOI-EMN arc just because her card is partially White. She is White for other reasons, not because of, specifically, her plot against Sorin and her emotions and motivations involving him.
I didn't say that was the case, actually. If you ask me, I think that SHOULD BE the case, but I'm not saying that it is. What I said in my analysis was that red also uses rock magic, even if it is from a different strand, and it would look better if Nahiri was straight mono-red. You could still justify her tools and it would be much more in line with her motivations.
Would you like to read Commander stories? Check my latest stories, coming from Lorwyn and Innistrad: Ghoulcaller Gisa and Doran, The Siege Tower! If you like my writing, ask me to write something for your commander as well!
Guys, this debate about Nahiri's Wness completely steps around the fact that we caught Wizards R-handed (couldn't avoid that pun, sorry) changing a story at a point where it had passed the point of no return... and changed it anyway. Nahiri in the Art Book is RW and sliding further into R. In the story we got, she's already R for all intents and purposes.
Edit: if you want a white action from Nahiri that is W and not R: trapping Sorin is an Oblivion Ring or Arrest style punishment and not a Nahiri's Wrath type of situation. That is W, not R.
Guys, this debate about Nahiri's Wness completely steps around the fact that we caught Wizards R-handed (couldn't avoid that pun, sorry) changing a story at a point where it had passed the point of no return... and changed it anyway. Nahiri in the Art Book is RW and sliding further into R. In the story we got, she's already R for all intents and purposes.
The artbook only states that she claimed that Sorin could die for Innistrad. A) we don't know if she's telling the truth, B) that makes her even more delusional and emotional by possibly jeopardising everyone in a game of luck. In other words, even more Red.
Either way, in all versions of this story she has no interest in sealing Emrakul.
Edit: if you want a white action from Nahiri that is W and not R: trapping Sorin is an Oblivion Ring or Arrest style punishment and not a Nahiri's Wrath type of situation. That is W, not R.
The artbook only states that she claimed that Sorin could die for Innistrad.
Wait, so that bit is in the art book? I thought that we'd confirmed that wasn't in there as more people got their hands on the book, i.e., that the original poster who claimed Nahiri wanted Sorin to sacrifice himself for Innistrad made it up/misremembered it.
Nahiri heading after Ugin seems very likely now. And her toolkit seems to be pretty impressive. Being able to mess with leylines so easily. Though I wonder if that's only because of all the cryptoliths, might be she can't do that normally.
Nahiri doesn't really have a beef with Ugin other than that she might be slightly peeved and curious as to why he didn't answer the Godzilla hotline when she called. It's not like with Sorin where he basically intentionally broke his oath. Then when Nahiri confronted him about it and did the planes walker equivalent of slapping him across the face and twisting his arm to force him to make good on his broken word, he responded by casting her into the Hellvault, a fate considerably worse than death.
Basically he sentenced her to eternity in a featureless void and screaming Hell populated entirely with the darkest and most evil beings on Instradad. Nahiri then spent the next thousand years rotting in Sorin's ultimate torture chamber while her home plane was eaten by the same monsters he had sworn to protect it from. Worse than that, by locking her away and refusing to re-open the vault to let the Eldrazi's warden out to do her job, he was the one that ultimately doomed Zendikar and allowed the Titans to lay waste to most of the living things on the plane.
I mean there is a huge difference between that and not answering the Godzilla phone which so far is Ugin's only sin. Now if Nahiri goes to ask Ugin what's up with the blocked phone calls and he turns around and has demons rape her for a few thousand years while he time travels back to gather her family and torture them to death in front of her, then she would have a similiar level of motivation for some vengeance on Ugin.
No, the real life equivalent is fire bombing a corrupted ghetto filled with murders, rapists and drug lords, because the king pin pissed you off. That's how Nahiri sees it.
Really? Where did she voice a sentiment like that?
And, quite frankly, even if she did, that argument is just asking to get Godwined.
The only time we are given any inkling of what Nahiri thinks of Inistrad is in the following excerpt:
"They called her the Harbinger. They weren't wrong, these fanatics and cultists, and they had followed her here, growing in number as she set about her work on Innistrad. They were devoted to her, and they reminded Nahiri that the only thing worth saving in this whole damned world was her revenge."
Nahiri obviously doesn't think much of Innistrad, but at no point does she say this is her primary reason for diverting Emrakul from murdering Zendikar or where ever else she may have been, to doing the same to Inistrad. She quite clearly states that her reason for changing Emrakul's target was because Emrakul had to go somewhere and she figured what better place than the home town of the guy who is most responsible for Emrakul being set free. It also just so happens that this is the same guy that condemned Nahiri to a fate worse than death by banishing her to a featureless Hell populated entirely by the most vile and evil entities found on all of Inistrad for a thousand mind breaking years.
So she basically saved one plane and exchanged it's fate with Inistrad's because she figured if any plane needs to die it might as well be the one that belongs to the dick whose betrayal led the Eldrazi to being freed in the first place. Plus she personally wants to see the guy responsible shed tears of blood for what he has done. It's very hard to argue that Nahiri is the good guy at this point. She is seeking personal vengeance more so than serving a greater sense of justice. In the big picture her actions are basically neutral as far as the greater good goes. She has saved as many people as she has condemned. She saved one plane by dooming another. This is in stark contrast to Sorin whose selfish actions have led to the death of millions more innocents than would have otherwise died. Had the Eldrazi's jailer been there to watch over their prison instead of trapped in a featureless Hell of Sorin's making, both Zendikar and Inistrad would have been spared.
Olivia was well characterised
Nahiri and Sorin displayed old walker attitudes
Nahiri (cold vengeance prepared) and Sorin (disdainful raw emotional [after losing his friend, daughter and home]) were both dangerous ... and I genuinely wasn't sure who would win
Overall, the whole arc of Sorin and Nahiri from mentor/mentee to nemeses with the parallels in tortured worlds and imprisonment has been great to watch... And I don't think it's over. I was surprised that Nahiri didn't sacrifice herself for redemption but this opens up further stories. Just as I assume Sorin will be freed eventually (maybe not until Innistrad 3), I assume Nahiri will seek out Ugin... Not necessarily to fight (though she may be hot-headed), and no doubt he will be suitably unimpressed with her actions and will school her... the only question then is what story will WOTC create that can re-use this rivalry.
For those who complain about the writing... You're entitled to do so but I think you expect too much. These storylines, characterisations and overall writing depth are consistent with the comic books that they have acknowledged as their inspirational storytelling medium and there have been some true gems ('the blight we were born for' as well as lowlights 'Nissa's arc during BTZ; just as comics range from Watchmen through to Civil War).
I am surprised this story came so early in the block as it means that the Gatewatch will have a larger role in story than I'd hoped... But this is the new Jacetus League world we live in (that was promised since Origins) and so the expectation fault is my own.
Lastly, while we all suspect the outcome of Emrakul ... WE DONT KNOW ... So I am quietly hoping that it will be something satisfying. (My biggest fear is a card reveal later this week that shows tamiyo doing a moon entrapment or some such that will remo e the excitement of finding out the story 'as it happens')
I tried to argue some of these points many times through many topics, but you really did a wonderful job of summarizing how Sorin was not exactly as purposely evil as people are saying.
It's not even that. From her point of view, Emrakul is invincible and would have moved onto another plane after she was done with Zendikar. It is being given the choice between destroying a corrupted ghetto filled with murderers, rapists, and drug lords whose kingpin destroyed your hometown, killed your family, and tortured you for years and destroying an innocent city that had done nothing wrong. It is ****ed up, but if she views Emrakul as indestructible and inevitable, she is not doing anything evil on the cosmic scale.
Storm Crow is strictly worse than Seacoast Drake.
I'm really curious as to whether Nahiri will become a vampire now after receiving Sorin's bite. She could even become a Mardu walker in future sets...
She can't. Innistradi vampirism isn't transfered through a simple bite, it requires a bit more than that. First, you have to have the blood of an existing vampire introduced into your system. As far as I'm aware, Sorin did not mix any of his blood with Nahiri's. Once that happens, you must then drink from the vampire who sired you within one month, or else you kick the bucket. She would need to return to Markov Manor to get a drink from her newly made statue, which seems unlikely. As cool as it would be, it probably won't happen, especially since Wizards made no mention of the requisite conditions in this story, to use as foreshadowing.
"You say 'learn from history,' but that does not mean 'learn the same bull***** the people in history learned alongside phrenology and alchemy.'" - The Blinking Spirit
Edit: also nothing is good or evil on a cosmic scale.
It's entirely reasonable to consider a person's methods when considering color. If you don't you basically say that having particular brands of magic be particular colors isn't important. It's like saying that Necromancy doesn't need to be black or fire magic doesn't need to be red.
And he had quotes like this:
"Cherish these last moments. Though your miserable life has come to nothing, I have given it a magnificent end."
"I have seen planes leveled and all life rendered to dust. It brought no pleasure, even to a heart as dark as mine."
"I have seen entire civilizations rise and fall. You mortals are but dust to me."
I liked the thought of a Sorin who, depending on the setting or situation at hand and how much skin he had in the game, could either be a pragmatic champion for the greater good or a ruthless villain who scatters the heroes like sand.
Is he callous or vindictive? He was an oldwalker. Most of them were various shades of gray to outright black. Ask Frayalise about vindictiveness--and she was one of the good Planeswalkers.
I've already understood for quite long that Sorin has never been on the Wizards's list of plot-relevant characters ever (which again begs the question why they bothered making him at all, but that's pointless to ask now), but I must say this last article of him still hurts as hell. I wish I live near you so that I can share some popcorns of grief with you, brother.
And yes, I agree wholeheartedly to the advise of "not expecting greatness of stories" anymore. Considering the screw-up of the Eldrazi and their three jailors, especially in the past year around the SOi storyline, I have lost all faith that the Wizards has the slightest capability of creating an engaging long-term character/plot anymore. I admit I might not quit Magic; I'm a gamer at heart, and I guess I do concede that as long as the cards sell, the stries don't matter; but the whole SOI block plot fiasco really has killed all my hopes of any slightly great world setting, good characterizations and deep stories anymore.
EDIT: Some random boldings for emphasis.
I don't want a good Sorin, I just think that in this block people are exaggerating his evilness and that he was poorly depicted most of the time. Nonetheless, his "I never asked for your trust, child. Only your obedience." and the whole fight/interaction with Avacyn were quite in line with his cards.
Her disdain for the cultures and equating Innistrad with Sorin - which she views as a vile monster - seems to indicate that she does view Innistrad as evil. That it reminds her of what she considers to be an expression of evil validates this assertion.
Heliod was well established previously to have an irrational jealousy of Elspeth. Sure, his motives weren't entirely selfish, but a defining character trait of his is how petty and self-righteous is he. He literally started a war becaue Purphoros wouldn't bow to him.
The biggest issue is that this story has been building for a long time. One could argue ever since Sorin showed up on Zendikar... alone... back when we knew he worked with two others whose whereabouts we knew nothing of, and then the Uncharted Realms that took us through Nahiri's life from post sealing to now. It fell kind of flat because in most of these things expectations usually overshadow reality. However, I am definitely holding this against Wizards because they managed to overcome this once already, in this set's story's no less, with the reveal of Emrakul actually beating expectations despite almost everyone seeing it coming.
Here's what I liked: we got the confrontation, and most parts of the confrontation itself. I'm not too sure how I feel about Nahiri having an army of loyal cultist or have figured out how to wrangle Eldrazi without them turning on her. I can buy that she uber leveled her lithomancy skills because she spent 1-2 years straight applying that knowledge to summon Emrakul, so it makes sense to me that her skills would grow, especially with her fleeting sanity to have her focus her skills on raw power rather than detail oriented. Also means that she had plenty of time to not master Innistrad's leylines, but also warp them to her ends (which was the entire purpose of the cryptolith network to begin with).
Most of the time one army vs. another army in a story doesn't work for me that well in writing. This story is not the exception... except once, and that's the moment when Sorin and Nahiri first see each other out in the battle. That worked more because it was the moment where the story shifted from army v. army to Sorin v. Nahiri. And them going at it worked out well enough. Well enough that I think that it would have been better if Wizards Creative had just dumped the armies and just had Sorin vs. Nahiri from the get go. It's why Sorin v. Avacyn worked: there wasn't any distractions (except when there were) to take away from the fact under the battle was two character moments. This was not two character moments. Sorin and Nahiri had those moments long before this story. This story was the consequences of those character moments.
Which leads us into the Art Book. First and foremost, this is as a definitive refutation of my past argument that Wizards's has the story set in stone long before we get to said story. I'm sure there's overarching points they can't back out of, like say Emrakul appears, but someone had a last minute change of heart on Nahiri's character arc and swerved left long after the art book had been sent to the printer. And it's a shame because I feel the Art Book ending would have worked better.
Second, it changes this story from the consequences story to another character moment. Nahiri reveals that she has a sense of justice under all that revenge and Sorin stamps out the last of it by refusing to put himself in Nahiri's shoes (even if he has no reason to trust her), and his callousness even turns Olivia who doesn't like him at all anyway. And through his inaction Sorin manages to crush what little hope Nahiri didn't know she even had left. It completes the her arc to villain in a way that I personally like.
Third,
As an aside, I think I'm okay with either outcome of Olivia. On the one hand, I can appreciate her self-preservation coming to Nahiri's aid to force her to stop Emrakul and that resulting in her death at Sorin's hand. On the other hand, since Nahiri's ultimatum to Sorin was edited out, it makes sense that with the battle lost, Olivia would crown herself
Queen of post-Iceberg TitanicLord of Innistrad and go down partying. As an interesting aside, the card Olivia, Mobilized for War makes much more sense for this set than the last one. She's gone mad and grants things haste because what's driving that madness is the knowledge there will be no tomorrow.To conclude, I reiterate the story itself though definitely needed something because as a grand confrontation that's been building for years, going "meh" or "eh" should not be the overall response.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
Ashiok, the problem with your analysis is that you are coming from a premise that is false: that emotions and motivations are the only aspects that dictate color in a Mtg character. That is not true. Nahiri is RW because she is a white mage, user of white magic, and is red because of her motivations and emotions. It is not NEEDED for her to have a White motivation in her actions in the SOI-EMN arc just because her card is partially White. She is White for other reasons, not because of, specifically, her plot against Sorin and her emotions and motivations involving him.
I'm not holding MaRo in any respect as far as character storytelling. Have you ever read any of his columns where he embodies colors and give them voices? They always sounds like 8-years-old in-fighting. He has yet to impress me with any sort of depth.
We're talking about someone who protected a plane for thousand of years. She has motivation against Sorin/Innistrad, but I fail to see justifications for ongoing villainy.
Hit the nail on the head, StarlightWizard. People always jump through hoops to define color identities based on ideology rather than methodology. Both factor in, of course, but methodology comes first and is absolute in determining their in-game color, and the ideology stems from that. A red mage will never shoot a jet of water. Simple as
I don't know the complete work of the punisher, but I'm well aware that, in general, the character doesn't kill innocent people. Debates of the Punisher character are not wheter or not is correct to murder innocents to get rid of a perceived greater evil, but rather whether or not killing is the righteous thing to do. When you kill someone you give up on the chance of their redemption, you abandon second chances and mercy, that's what the Punisher character is about. As far as I know (but I admit that this might be not true to all of his stories), the punisher does not murder innocent people to get rid of the bad guys. That's completely innacurate with his M.O. "Seems to indicate" is not good enough for me. It might be for you, no problems there, but I think in terms of philosophy Nahiri is lacking a good deal of white. Once again: she had plenty of time to know Innistrad and its people, she certainly saw good, common people in there and decided to murder them all anyway.
Spock would probably be a white/blue character, and his philosophy "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" reflects white very well. If it was a choice of murdering one hundred innocent people to save ten thousand, a white villain would do the murdering, and I would say that he is white. Nahiri is doing the opposite: she is murdering the thousands to get rid of the one, that is not white at all. A character like Gideon, on the other hand, would not do the murder, and it would struggle to find a third option even if it meant self-sacrifice. It is the Watchmen ending debate all over again. I didn't say that was the case, actually. If you ask me, I think that SHOULD BE the case, but I'm not saying that it is. What I said in my analysis was that red also uses rock magic, even if it is from a different strand, and it would look better if Nahiri was straight mono-red. You could still justify her tools and it would be much more in line with her motivations.
Read my other stories as well (some ongoing):
Reaper King (a horror story), Kaalia of the Vast (an origin story), Sequels for Innistrad (Alternative sequels for Inn), Grey Areas (Odric's fanfic), Royal Succession (goblins),The Tracker's Message (eldrazi on Innistrad) and Ugin and his Eye (the end of OGW).
Edit: if you want a white action from Nahiri that is W and not R: trapping Sorin is an Oblivion Ring or Arrest style punishment and not a Nahiri's Wrath type of situation. That is W, not R.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
~~~~~
The artbook only states that she claimed that Sorin could die for Innistrad. A) we don't know if she's telling the truth, B) that makes her even more delusional and emotional by possibly jeopardising everyone in a game of luck. In other words, even more Red.
Either way, in all versions of this story she has no interest in sealing Emrakul.
I would've gone for Declaration in Stone.
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Nahiri doesn't really have a beef with Ugin other than that she might be slightly peeved and curious as to why he didn't answer the Godzilla hotline when she called. It's not like with Sorin where he basically intentionally broke his oath. Then when Nahiri confronted him about it and did the planes walker equivalent of slapping him across the face and twisting his arm to force him to make good on his broken word, he responded by casting her into the Hellvault, a fate considerably worse than death.
Basically he sentenced her to eternity in a featureless void and screaming Hell populated entirely with the darkest and most evil beings on Instradad. Nahiri then spent the next thousand years rotting in Sorin's ultimate torture chamber while her home plane was eaten by the same monsters he had sworn to protect it from. Worse than that, by locking her away and refusing to re-open the vault to let the Eldrazi's warden out to do her job, he was the one that ultimately doomed Zendikar and allowed the Titans to lay waste to most of the living things on the plane.
I mean there is a huge difference between that and not answering the Godzilla phone which so far is Ugin's only sin. Now if Nahiri goes to ask Ugin what's up with the blocked phone calls and he turns around and has demons rape her for a few thousand years while he time travels back to gather her family and torture them to death in front of her, then she would have a similiar level of motivation for some vengeance on Ugin.
The only time we are given any inkling of what Nahiri thinks of Inistrad is in the following excerpt:
"They called her the Harbinger. They weren't wrong, these fanatics and cultists, and they had followed her here, growing in number as she set about her work on Innistrad. They were devoted to her, and they reminded Nahiri that the only thing worth saving in this whole damned world was her revenge."
Nahiri obviously doesn't think much of Innistrad, but at no point does she say this is her primary reason for diverting Emrakul from murdering Zendikar or where ever else she may have been, to doing the same to Inistrad. She quite clearly states that her reason for changing Emrakul's target was because Emrakul had to go somewhere and she figured what better place than the home town of the guy who is most responsible for Emrakul being set free. It also just so happens that this is the same guy that condemned Nahiri to a fate worse than death by banishing her to a featureless Hell populated entirely by the most vile and evil entities found on all of Inistrad for a thousand mind breaking years.
So she basically saved one plane and exchanged it's fate with Inistrad's because she figured if any plane needs to die it might as well be the one that belongs to the dick whose betrayal led the Eldrazi to being freed in the first place. Plus she personally wants to see the guy responsible shed tears of blood for what he has done. It's very hard to argue that Nahiri is the good guy at this point. She is seeking personal vengeance more so than serving a greater sense of justice. In the big picture her actions are basically neutral as far as the greater good goes. She has saved as many people as she has condemned. She saved one plane by dooming another. This is in stark contrast to Sorin whose selfish actions have led to the death of millions more innocents than would have otherwise died. Had the Eldrazi's jailer been there to watch over their prison instead of trapped in a featureless Hell of Sorin's making, both Zendikar and Inistrad would have been spared.
Nahiri is no saint, not anymore anyway.