Well, the artbook has got us a fast version of the storyline, i think we can discuss a little about how EM will finally change innistrad. (maybe spoilers ahead)
Well, emrakul imprisioned in the moon looks for me like a giant deus ex machina, but i can't change that. so, as long as her is in the moon, there will be corrupted living things. almost all the angels are dead or are turned into eldrazi. what will the humans on the plane do to survive? new angels would be good or corrupted? without avacyn, we could see how bad was DA. humanity was about to go extinct. if angels now become predators on humans too, are the possibilities of humans to survive almost 0?
I liked avacyn restored. and the new storyline throwed anything good that set brought to the fire. i really didn't see the need to do that, and now how are they gonna stabilize the plane now?
1) This is one of the least deus ex machina endings in magic ever. It's been long established the ability of moon silver to seal things away. Hence the helvault.
2) things seem to be setting up for Sigarda to take Avacyns place as protector of humanity.
3) Ems influence will likely leak out of the moon causing continues mutations.
Sigarda isn't being backed by pre-Mending Planeswalker enchantments though, and lacks the Helvault to work with too. Even if future corruption is mostly curtailed it's hard to imagine Innistrad getting much better. Short of all (or the vast majority) of Geists and Werewolves backing humans it seems like another Dark Ascension is inevitable. Or Emrakul monsters really having it out for regular ones.
According to the art book, everything grew tentacles. Sigarda is the last sane, non tentacled angel on Innistrad. From the sounds of it, everything else is in similar condition. The Nephalia coastline turned into a gibbering mob of cultists. The second largest city in Gavony uprooted itself and oozed away. Ashmouth turned into Eldrazi-mouth. Judging from the art book, the plane is just another eldrazified hellscape. It might recover, depending on how well the moon seals Emrakul. I could care less at this point.
Regarding the Silver Moon: Please look up words before you randomly throw them at something you don't like. Deus ex machina is when a plot is resolved with a totally random and unanticipated turn of events. Wizards has been hinting the moon's potential as a prison for five years. Hell of a foreshadow. In this case, deus ex machina would look like this: The Gatewatch is on the edge of defeat, when suddenly, the sky splits open and an army of Phyrexian heroes pours through, with Urza and Serra at the lead, slaying the Eldrazi and saving the day.
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Things actually aren't that bad. The Order of Saint Traft is using benevolent geists to aid them in the battle with darkness. It's likely most of the creeping horrors will be killed in the second battle of Thraben. The monsters are just as weakened following Emrakul's entry as everyone else, so it's not like humanity will be instantly overrun.
I mean, things will definitely be bad, but not 'we can never return here because everything is dead' bad. Humanity survived 5,000 years without Avacyn, and they can survive again in a world where the Vampire and Werewolf populations have been significantly cut down.
I imagine we'll see lingering Emrakul influence, but more like SOI than in EMN.
Humanity may not be instantly overrun, but I would still say they should be wiped out long run. Unless Sorin was that bad at seeing how quickly humans were being wiped out he still thought Avacyn was necessary. Avacyn gone and Emrakul there seems like it should just reach the inevitable.
It will definitely be a struggle, but that is life on Innistrad.
The reason Sorin needed Avacyn was because the Vampires had reached a critical mass. Depending on how frequently they converted, it could have taken years for it to become unsustainable. But Nahiri did a real number on the vamps.
The Order of Saint Traft and Sigarda will create some stability. Then they will just need to hunt down the remaining horrors, same as before except these are Eldrazi-fied. And there is still room for old horror.
Today's story mentioned that the benevolent giests of the holy dead had been held back by Avacynian wards, which were ritualistically placed on graves to keep the dead dead as the "blessed sleep." This would be counter productive for humanity if, as we saw today, the giests of good humans retain their "goodness" and would be able to rise and assist the living, like the ancestors of the Abzan. The more holy humans die, the more holy giests to back them up. Its speculation on my part, but its not infeasible that the wards were in part Sorin's idea. It would serve the dual purpose of denying ghoulcallers zombies (which compete with vampires over killing humans) as well as deny humans reinforcement from most benevolent giests (some would get through as not all dead received the wards, such as when people are killed far from civilization) which could have helped turn the tide in their favor against vampires. The story where Sorin kills Avacyn confirms that they have met face to face a number of times, and that he makes her forget him.
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Jace will lean in to kiss Liliana after she saves the Gatewatch, but he'll make the mistake of closing his eyes and she'll quickly switch places with a zombie right before his lips land on hers. He opens his eyes and discovers that he's accidentally smooched Gisa's mom. He immediately planeswalks to Ravnica in tears and isn't seen for awhile. The eventual Return to Return to Ravnica block will contain exactly three cards, all of which will depict Gideon in various stages of hugging Jace and telling him that everything's gonna be okay.
Faced with the need to do something with all that Eldrazi meat she and her army have chopped up, Thalia will open a grill called Cathars' Marinade. Saint Traft will possess Liliana and he'll argue a lot with the Raven Man about what Liliana should have for dinner (she's not welcome at Cathars' Marinade after that whole Helvault fiasco).
Lots of vampires and cathars and other non-angel creatures will flock to Sorin's infrastructural prison at Markov Manor and taunt him with stupid stone-based puns like "boy, your relationship with Nahiri sure got rocky." He'll frown really menacingly but not do anything else about it, so he'll serve pretty much the same narrative function as he has for the past few years.
Hal and Alena will get sick of everyone making such a big deal about their relationship and they'll spend years moving around to avoid members of Design showing up at their houses and asking them to pose for card art for a supplemental product.
Avacyn already had a built in adjustment system, I imagine if geists were helping humans too much Avacyn would just get weak. And that sounds like something kind of reasonable to help, though I kind of question if it would really be enough. During Dark Ascension presumably the same thing happened, it didn't seem to be enough to stop the end of humans. And there are no more angels.
- In Dark Ascension White geists were all the rage (many of which evil)
- Come Avacyn Restored there are only two White geists
- In Shadows over Innistrad the White geists are there but still in the background
- In Eldritch Moon they get a sudden focus
Geists will probably be the religious or at least white magic focus in Innistrad from now on. Perhaps fitting, since this is the plane where death is never the end.
White Geists are supposed to be good, Blue were the evil ones. I remember that distinction pretty clearly from old Innistrad. Even back then there were helpful geists, just that they weren't as direct for starters.
I think there's a conflating going on here about the ability of geists to manifest and the reasons to do so. Avacyn and Sorin never set up implements or wards to keep the geists away; she just offered them rest and a way to reunite with the mana of the plane. Innistrad has no heaven or reward-based faith. People just live to help each other as much as they can and then die. Via the Planeswalker Guide from 2011:
"Geists have always been a presence on Innistrad, but before Avacyn, all such spirits were malevolent, manifesting on the plane only because of a grudge or regret powerful enough to disturb the Blessed Sleep of the body to which they were connected. In Avacyn's absence, the malevolent spirits were counterbalanced by the appearance of many benevolent and neutral geists, from nurturing apparitions of family members who have passed on to inscrutable ghosts who seem to want to continue whatever duty they had in life.
Avacyn as Psychopomp
This new balance in the spirit realm resulted from Avacyn's function as psychopomp for the dead; her existence shepherded the souls of the departed back into the plane's Æthereal space. This metaphysical guidance from Avacyn enabled geists to elect to turn away from reunion with the plane's essence—a phenomenon that previously occurred only when a geist's anguish or regret overcame the pull toward the Æther."
Avacyn created a new wrinkle in the afterlife system to essentially create a purgatory state. Geists could continue to interact with the living, such as Traft, and do so as sentient beings rather than just emotional poltergeists. How that's continued after her death isn't entirely clear, but Innistrad adapts and survives.
Further, it states clearly that geists can be any color and help or hurt in any color. Well, mostly. Red and black not so much. Sigarda, in theory, as the archangel who presided over birth could assume the Blessed Sleep duties Bruna leaves open with the alabaster flight gone. Birth and death are opposite ends of the coin. And given Traft's presence, I agree with Mulleronis that geists are likely to be a major focus going forward.
We all want to believe we exist after death. Heaven, hell, energy, matter, Nirvana, fertilizer or ghosts. Innistrad doesn't have a Heaven, and their hell is very real but not that different from their everyday. Becoming like Traft with Sogsrda'a aid in the future and continuing to protect the living seems quite likely and as good of a fate as you can get. Until the black and white mana of the plane readjust to reform angels and demons again, geists are likely to be the only help humans receive.
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I don't think it's ever been explicitly stated, but I've always had the impression that the main threat to humans on Innistrad, from a species survival/continuity of civilization standpoint, are the vampires. They're numerous, immortal, not controlled by humans, can convert humans to increase their numbers, have to eat humans to survive, and seem to lack the self-control and/or inclination to moderate that consumption. You can say some of those things about some other monsters, but vampires just seem like they'd be the main threat to the species.
I also have the impression that things have been really, really bad for the vampires lately. The humans and angels were ascendant at the end of Avacyn Restored, and Sigarda's musings in A Gaze Blank and Pitiless seem to say that that ascendancy hadn't really abated yet. Then Nahiri and assorted madness seem to have devastated the major bloodlines, except the Stromkirk (though if their sea god cult led a lot of them to fall under Emrakul's thrall and the Eldrazi-corrupted weaken or die when Emrakul is sealed, they might be getting wrecked too).
White Geists are supposed to be good, Blue were the evil ones. I remember that distinction pretty clearly from old Innistrad. Even back then there were helpful geists, just that they weren't as direct for starters.
In theory. In practise (and thankfully), most of the White geists in Dark Ascension are malevolent or at least harmful.
The Nephalia planeswalker guide also gives examples of evil White geists.
The time frame of the whole thing is wierd, in some ways SOI is taking place right after AVR, but at the same time it feels like decades of progressed.
According to the art book, Sigarda doesn't have a flight anymore. She's literally the last uncorrupted angel on Innistrad.
We have no idea how long it will take for new angels to form, assuming they follow the same rules as demons.
The Plane Shift book said that Sigarda's entire flight was immune to Emrakul's corruption, so I'm a little surprised that Sigarda is the only uncorrupted angel left. I suppose the rest of her flight was killed in battle?
The Plane Shift book also says that it takes a demon anywhere between 99 days and 99 years to be reborn after being killed, and strongly implies that it's the same demon who comes back, not a new one. I'd imagine similar rules apply to angels, so the rest of Sigarda's flight should come back eventually.
I'm not sure what happens to corrupted angels and demons who get killed. Would they be reborn as pure angels and demons once again? Would they be reborn in their current corrupted forms? Or would they simply not come back at all? Whenever one of Ulamog or Kozilek's spawn died, their essence was absorbed back into the Titan that created them, so maybe the same thing happens to all the beings corrupted by Emrakul.
I wonder if the 4th Sister that Avacyn defeated will have any relevance in the future with Avacyn gone and things abit whacky currently
I was really expecting her to have a major role in this block, I was surprised that she was nowhere to be found in Eldritch Moon. It seems strange that they'd even mention a fourth Archangel if she wasn't going to be important, I was positive it was foreshadowing. Maybe they're saving her for a third Innistrad block?
What is corrupted by Emrakul becomes Emrakul. All her spawn decay in her absence. Just how corrupted humans no longer have souls to form spirits, presumably neither are demons or angels individual beings anymore, so they probably can't return.
I also doubt that Innistrad angels can return at all, since the Fourth Sister and her entire flight are dead. Demons probably can rebirth themselves because the entire plane is tilted towards Black mana.
I'm not sure if it's directly stated anywhere, but it's heavily implied that angels eventually return after being killed, just like demons do. In the story where Avacyn dies, she tells Sorin that she can't be permanently destroyed and that she'll keep coming back to battle him for eternity. She's wrong, since Sorin then proceeds to unmake her, but it's safe to assume that she would've been correct under normal circumstances. Sorin was only able to destroy her because he was the one who originally created her, and he still had to perform a specific ritual in a specific location to do it. If she'd simply been killed in battle, she would've come back.
As for the fourth Archangel, maybe Avacyn was able to prevent her from returning somehow. At any rate, she probably will come back at some point. I fully expect that we'll see her sooner or later (probably later, since it'll probably be a while before we go back to Innistrad).
I'm not sure if it's directly stated anywhere, but it's heavily implied that angels eventually return after being killed, just like demons do. In the story where Avacyn dies, she tells Sorin that she can't be permanently destroyed and that she'll keep coming back to battle him for eternity. She's wrong, since Sorin then proceeds to unmake her, but it's safe to assume that she would've been correct under normal circumstances. Sorin was only able to destroy her because he was the one who originally created her, and he still had to perform a specific ritual in a specific location to do it. If she'd simply been killed in battle, she would've come back.
As for the fourth Archangel, maybe Avacyn was able to prevent her from returning somehow. At any rate, she probably will come back at some point. I fully expect that we'll see her sooner or later (probably later, since it'll probably be a while before we go back to Innistrad).
While its likely other angels comeback after being killed Avacyn only assumed that she would come back if killed. We see this when Sorin thought Nahiri would kill Avacyn, if she would just come back Sorin wouldn't have been concerned. According to Maro the B/W angel wasn't even a thing until the set was done and the finer points in the story was being finished.
kirblar024 asked: Given the storyline w/ Liliana fighting Emrakul w/ Zombies, the lack of a B/W Legendary Zombie Angel makes me very sad.
The story that introduced that character was written long after the file was done. It’s hard to make cards for characters that don’t exist yet. : )
This is him confirming that the fourth sister didn't exists until after the set was done.
ccgnick asked: Mark, I think you might have spoiled unrevealed story again. We don't know anything about a B/W zombie angel character. The asker was wishing that we got one.
***SPOILER***
They were asking about the White/Black angel that we learned once existed in a Ken Troop story. It being a Zombie was the wish fulfillment.
This is him confirming that he was talking about the B/W angel from that story not anything else.
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Well, emrakul imprisioned in the moon looks for me like a giant deus ex machina, but i can't change that. so, as long as her is in the moon, there will be corrupted living things. almost all the angels are dead or are turned into eldrazi. what will the humans on the plane do to survive? new angels would be good or corrupted? without avacyn, we could see how bad was DA. humanity was about to go extinct. if angels now become predators on humans too, are the possibilities of humans to survive almost 0?
I liked avacyn restored. and the new storyline throwed anything good that set brought to the fire. i really didn't see the need to do that, and now how are they gonna stabilize the plane now?
2) things seem to be setting up for Sigarda to take Avacyns place as protector of humanity.
3) Ems influence will likely leak out of the moon causing continues mutations.
According to the art book, everything grew tentacles. Sigarda is the last sane, non tentacled angel on Innistrad. From the sounds of it, everything else is in similar condition. The Nephalia coastline turned into a gibbering mob of cultists. The second largest city in Gavony uprooted itself and oozed away. Ashmouth turned into Eldrazi-mouth. Judging from the art book, the plane is just another eldrazified hellscape. It might recover, depending on how well the moon seals Emrakul. I could care less at this point.
Regarding the Silver Moon: Please look up words before you randomly throw them at something you don't like. Deus ex machina is when a plot is resolved with a totally random and unanticipated turn of events. Wizards has been hinting the moon's potential as a prison for five years. Hell of a foreshadow. In this case, deus ex machina would look like this: The Gatewatch is on the edge of defeat, when suddenly, the sky splits open and an army of Phyrexian heroes pours through, with Urza and Serra at the lead, slaying the Eldrazi and saving the day.
"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
But yeah, the moon was one of their most foreshadowed things I can think of in recent years.
I mean, things will definitely be bad, but not 'we can never return here because everything is dead' bad. Humanity survived 5,000 years without Avacyn, and they can survive again in a world where the Vampire and Werewolf populations have been significantly cut down.
I imagine we'll see lingering Emrakul influence, but more like SOI than in EMN.
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The reason Sorin needed Avacyn was because the Vampires had reached a critical mass. Depending on how frequently they converted, it could have taken years for it to become unsustainable. But Nahiri did a real number on the vamps.
The Order of Saint Traft and Sigarda will create some stability. Then they will just need to hunt down the remaining horrors, same as before except these are Eldrazi-fied. And there is still room for old horror.
Onering's 4 simple steps that let you solve any problem with Magic's gameplay
Step 1: Identify the problem. What aspect of Magic don't you like? Step 2: Find out how others deal with the problem. How do players deal with this aspect of the game when they run into it? Step 3: Do what those players do. Step 4: No more problem. Bonus: You are now better at Magic. Enjoy those extra wins!
Faced with the need to do something with all that Eldrazi meat she and her army have chopped up, Thalia will open a grill called Cathars' Marinade. Saint Traft will possess Liliana and he'll argue a lot with the Raven Man about what Liliana should have for dinner (she's not welcome at Cathars' Marinade after that whole Helvault fiasco).
Lots of vampires and cathars and other non-angel creatures will flock to Sorin's infrastructural prison at Markov Manor and taunt him with stupid stone-based puns like "boy, your relationship with Nahiri sure got rocky." He'll frown really menacingly but not do anything else about it, so he'll serve pretty much the same narrative function as he has for the past few years.
Hal and Alena will get sick of everyone making such a big deal about their relationship and they'll spend years moving around to avoid members of Design showing up at their houses and asking them to pose for card art for a supplemental product.
- In Dark Ascension White geists were all the rage (many of which evil)
- Come Avacyn Restored there are only two White geists
- In Shadows over Innistrad the White geists are there but still in the background
- In Eldritch Moon they get a sudden focus
Geists will probably be the religious or at least white magic focus in Innistrad from now on. Perhaps fitting, since this is the plane where death is never the end.
"Geists have always been a presence on Innistrad, but before Avacyn, all such spirits were malevolent, manifesting on the plane only because of a grudge or regret powerful enough to disturb the Blessed Sleep of the body to which they were connected. In Avacyn's absence, the malevolent spirits were counterbalanced by the appearance of many benevolent and neutral geists, from nurturing apparitions of family members who have passed on to inscrutable ghosts who seem to want to continue whatever duty they had in life.
Avacyn as Psychopomp
This new balance in the spirit realm resulted from Avacyn's function as psychopomp for the dead; her existence shepherded the souls of the departed back into the plane's Æthereal space. This metaphysical guidance from Avacyn enabled geists to elect to turn away from reunion with the plane's essence—a phenomenon that previously occurred only when a geist's anguish or regret overcame the pull toward the Æther."
Avacyn created a new wrinkle in the afterlife system to essentially create a purgatory state. Geists could continue to interact with the living, such as Traft, and do so as sentient beings rather than just emotional poltergeists. How that's continued after her death isn't entirely clear, but Innistrad adapts and survives.
Further, it states clearly that geists can be any color and help or hurt in any color. Well, mostly. Red and black not so much. Sigarda, in theory, as the archangel who presided over birth could assume the Blessed Sleep duties Bruna leaves open with the alabaster flight gone. Birth and death are opposite ends of the coin. And given Traft's presence, I agree with Mulleronis that geists are likely to be a major focus going forward.
We all want to believe we exist after death. Heaven, hell, energy, matter, Nirvana, fertilizer or ghosts. Innistrad doesn't have a Heaven, and their hell is very real but not that different from their everyday. Becoming like Traft with Sogsrda'a aid in the future and continuing to protect the living seems quite likely and as good of a fate as you can get. Until the black and white mana of the plane readjust to reform angels and demons again, geists are likely to be the only help humans receive.
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I also have the impression that things have been really, really bad for the vampires lately. The humans and angels were ascendant at the end of Avacyn Restored, and Sigarda's musings in A Gaze Blank and Pitiless seem to say that that ascendancy hadn't really abated yet. Then Nahiri and assorted madness seem to have devastated the major bloodlines, except the Stromkirk (though if their sea god cult led a lot of them to fall under Emrakul's thrall and the Eldrazi-corrupted weaken or die when Emrakul is sealed, they might be getting wrecked too).
In theory. In practise (and thankfully), most of the White geists in Dark Ascension are malevolent or at least harmful.
The Nephalia planeswalker guide also gives examples of evil White geists.
According to the art book, Sigarda doesn't have a flight anymore. She's literally the last uncorrupted angel on Innistrad.
We have no idea how long it will take for new angels to form, assuming they follow the same rules as demons.
The Plane Shift book said that Sigarda's entire flight was immune to Emrakul's corruption, so I'm a little surprised that Sigarda is the only uncorrupted angel left. I suppose the rest of her flight was killed in battle?
The Plane Shift book also says that it takes a demon anywhere between 99 days and 99 years to be reborn after being killed, and strongly implies that it's the same demon who comes back, not a new one. I'd imagine similar rules apply to angels, so the rest of Sigarda's flight should come back eventually.
I'm not sure what happens to corrupted angels and demons who get killed. Would they be reborn as pure angels and demons once again? Would they be reborn in their current corrupted forms? Or would they simply not come back at all? Whenever one of Ulamog or Kozilek's spawn died, their essence was absorbed back into the Titan that created them, so maybe the same thing happens to all the beings corrupted by Emrakul.
I was really expecting her to have a major role in this block, I was surprised that she was nowhere to be found in Eldritch Moon. It seems strange that they'd even mention a fourth Archangel if she wasn't going to be important, I was positive it was foreshadowing. Maybe they're saving her for a third Innistrad block?
I also doubt that Innistrad angels can return at all, since the Fourth Sister and her entire flight are dead. Demons probably can rebirth themselves because the entire plane is tilted towards Black mana.
As for the fourth Archangel, maybe Avacyn was able to prevent her from returning somehow. At any rate, she probably will come back at some point. I fully expect that we'll see her sooner or later (probably later, since it'll probably be a while before we go back to Innistrad).
This is him confirming that the fourth sister didn't exists until after the set was done.
This is him confirming that he was talking about the B/W angel from that story not anything else.