I have to ask what part of this didn't make sense to you? You seemed to be going good with the asphalt symbolism but then you got lost or something. So to try and make sense of what you had, mana is water, a mage draws water from 'elsewhere' and shapes it into spells, you could even see them as simple buckets or spout. Through out the plane water flows in rivers(leylines), each carrying a specific concentration and type of mana, most mages aren't particularly aware of these rivers but can usually feel where several meet to make a lake(high sources of mana). Madara, Bolas's throne on Dominaria was a convergence of the leylines for BUR and it made a sort of delicious puddle where he liked to chill. Kefnet is essentially a lake, a concentration of leylines, as a divine being part of a plane it seems like a very reasonable explanation. He isn't just a large source of mana like a powerstone, he is connected to the world, part of the very fabric of the plane. So he isn't like a powerful mage that could be seen as a tower or geyser but part of the landscape, a lake, a cluster of highways(you know those places where you can cross over between the I-10 and the 215), a nexus of leylines.
His trial being made of leylines is a little weirder, until you remember its made by him and not a normal mage. A being of the world should be able to shape the natural magic of the world to create their 'base'. So the trials should be made of leylines woven together to create a natural occurrence(think Bermuda triangle[if it was a real thing]), not magecraft.
A harder to read story today due to all the imagery during the 'nightmare' trial, which is unfortunate because most stories in this arc have been solid so far.
I echo what some have said about Leylines being overused when mana would be better or more 'on-theme' for magic, but having said that Northjayhawk's breakdown on levels of magic above is a really good position that I endorse and think everyone should read (even if its a bit long).
What I wanted to add to the discussion was:
For those concerned that the Gatewatch will pull this one out of their A@#$ so they can do a 'Return to Amonkhet' block later down the line I do propose that Wizards could pull a very clever trick here... complete devastation of the plane would allow a return block to focus on the dusty tomb-raider tropes of Egyptian culture that they have largely avoided this time around.
Yeah. Kamigawa had all this diverse magic to explore, wielded by many diverse mages, on one world. We can't even have that kind of depth to magic over the course of multiple planes these days because Planeswalkers aren't bothering to learn anything. They arrive knowing the solutions, because planeswalkers. There are no threats to them, nothing for them to learn or grow with in a new and unique world. Nothing to respect or take pause for.
Just over it dude.
Tamiyo is the closest we've had to what a planeswalker should be. She arrived on Innistrad to learn. About its moon, its magic, its metaphysics. She genuinely heeded Avacyn and her powers. She worked with Jenrik, who was also learning. Their work took time and effort. Then the Gatewatch formed and Marketing killed off Jenrik to put Jace as the lead investigator and have him work with Tamiyo instead, because planeswalker.
And this coming from a Jace fan.
Tamiyo came from Kamigawa, so clearly from the plane of proper character development she learnt how to be a one
Okay, despite all the flaws of the Gatewatch, Nissa is still my favorite character among the main 5 (I'm discounting Ajani off because he appeared for merely 1 block and from the sheer quantity of written material of each planeswalker it'll be quite unfair to compare him as a favorite with the rest even if he's a member on the surface).
That's not Emrakul. As much as I like the idea of "Nissa is Emrakul's Horcrux (or even better, Emrakul has 7 Horcruxes, counting the Moon and Tamiyo)" and the Eldrazi in general, even I highly doubt the story will take this route. The Trial of Knowledge was clearly designed to mess with memories, and we got one of the most vital pieces of memories - what Jace couldn't comprehend when he saw Nissa suffering approximately the same mental attack he did back then.
What I didn't really like was in that memory it implied Emrakul used the exact same tactic as it did on Jace. Emrakul proved capable of altering the same concept ("Existence is a chess game to me, I am the hand that moves life, the player of the game of existence") to a more understandable one to Gideon (remember pseudo-Erebos?). Nissa never striked me the type to play chess as well, which goes to show how screwed the retcon did to her backstory (to the point Emrakul couldn't find an example from her history). Unless Emrakul really did present something different to Nissa but presented the Jace Scenario to us as we're reading it because Emrakul knows we only witnessed what it did to Jace and knows we are reading about Nissa's memory now, but that's some fourth wall-breaking level (although that'll be awesome on a meta-level, it means Emrakul's mental deception abilities is capable of breaching our dimension).
As for the whole Kefnet scenario, I'll buy it - all she did was find a "change temper" switch on Kefnet himself, who is made of leylines and while her whole leyline business is indeed getting stale, this is still the first time an entire being (or five) was constructed from leylines. We recognize all the potential brokenness from that leyline gimmick, but to be fair other than Zendikar (which she had more or less mastery over and still required Chandra at the very least), she was nothing more than a "Planeswalker's Guide to the plane's mana flow and structure" (plot-wise she hardly harnessed the leylines themselves for anything game-breaking).
As for the other 3 Gods mystery, I'm beginning to think that since they are made of leylines, Bolas is artificially creating "Maelstroms" to devour (at this point Maelstroms being pure energy made of fermented leylines won't surprise me anymore). He sure isn't going to run into enough Alaras, so he'll have to create his own snack factory.
A harder to read story today due to all the imagery during the 'nightmare' trial, which is unfortunate because most stories in this arc have been solid so far.
I echo what some have said about Leylines being overused when mana would be better or more 'on-theme' for magic, but having said that Northjayhawk's breakdown on levels of magic above is a really good position that I endorse and think everyone should read (even if its a bit long).
What I wanted to add to the discussion was:
For those concerned that the Gatewatch will pull this one out of their A@#$ so they can do a 'Return to Amonkhet' block later down the line I do propose that Wizards could pull a very clever trick here... complete devastation of the plane would allow a return block to focus on the dusty tomb-raider tropes of Egyptian culture that they have largely avoided this time around.
Hmmm, good point I hadn't thought of the fact that we already have a word (mana), my post was mostly a stream of consciousness.
Perhaps a leyline is a running river of mana. You can grab mana from a leyline. And some spells (or Gods) are so powerful that you need leylines to make them. Not just a cup of magic but a never-ending river of it.
I absolutely loved the poetic description of Bolas' conquest. Felt very fitting with the plane. Like animated hieroglyphics. Shame that we already got that story told in a less impressive way previously.
The trial was generic. Whatever.
The leylines thing is . . . yeah stupid and actually confusing. Kefnet it made of leylines? What? They need creative to nail down the terminology.
I really don't get the confusion on leylines. It's just basically saying that the Gods are tied to the plane. Using water as an analogy, rivers are leylines, lakes are the Gods. Or possibly they're a dense intersection of leylines.
Given I've read about leylines before though that might be part of why this isn't confusing. Leylines typically have places where they intersect, which are big locations of power. The Gods are that.
I really don't get the confusion on leylines. It's just basically saying that the Gods are tied to the plane. Using water as an analogy, rivers are leylines, lakes are the Gods. Or possibly they're a dense intersection of leylines.
You wouldn't at least find it weird if someone describe a lake as "a tightly woven collection of rivers" rather than "a mass of water"?
I really don't get the confusion on leylines. It's just basically saying that the Gods are tied to the plane. Using water as an analogy, rivers are leylines, lakes are the Gods. Or possibly they're a dense intersection of leylines.
You wouldn't at least find it weird if someone describe a lake as "a tightly woven collection of rivers" rather than "a mass of water"?
Think of it more like "the lake and the river are both made of H2O molecules."
I really don't get the confusion on leylines. It's just basically saying that the Gods are tied to the plane. Using water as an analogy, rivers are leylines, lakes are the Gods. Or possibly they're a dense intersection of leylines.
You wouldn't at least find it weird if someone describe a lake as "a tightly woven collection of rivers" rather than "a mass of water"?
Think of it more like "the lake and the river are both made of H2O molecules."
But that's not what was said and not what people take issue with.
A leyline pretty much always (ie every time I've ever seen it referred to except in this exact story) refers to a large thing that possesses tremendous power. This implies that there are also little leylines that can be woven into relatively small objects. It is very much outside of the norm in a strange way and not for any apparent reason. Its like being given a wicker basket a being told it is woven out of tree trunks, that would be a weird redefinition of tree trunk and you'd probably ask if the person who said it knew what a tree trunk was and maybe they meant something else.
I really don't get the confusion on leylines. It's just basically saying that the Gods are tied to the plane. Using water as an analogy, rivers are leylines, lakes are the Gods. Or possibly they're a dense intersection of leylines.
You wouldn't at least find it weird if someone describe a lake as "a tightly woven collection of rivers" rather than "a mass of water"?
Think of it more like "the lake and the river are both made of H2O molecules."
But that's not what was said and not what people take issue with.
A leyline pretty much always (ie every time I've ever seen it referred to except in this exact story) refers to a large thing that possesses tremendous power. This implies that there are also little leylines that can be woven into relatively small objects. It is very much outside of the norm in a strange way and not for any apparent reason. Its like being given a wicker basket a being told it is woven out of tree trunks, that would be a weird redefinition of tree trunk and you'd probably ask if the person who said it knew what a tree trunk was and maybe they meant something else.
One possibility here is that the use of the term "leyline", which has a specific meaning, in this story, is because we are seeing things from Nissa's perspective. As a green mage heavily tied to the land, it makes sense that she would think of currents of mana (which is what we are all really talking about, I think) in terms of something she is most familiar with. To put it another way, Nissa's power is to manipulate currents of mana, and in this story, she figured out how to create a brand new and different type of one. Someone like Jace would probably conceptualize what Nissa did as as some form of essence alteration or magical reprogramming, but to green-oriented Nissa, she perceived what she did in terms of leylines.
Or maybe I'm giving the Creative Team too much credit.
I mean, very briefly looking through just a google search, plenty of examples of people talking about "nexuses of leylines". That's what the Gods are. That so many people haven't heard of that concept is weird to me though.
I mean, very briefly looking through just a google search, plenty of examples of people talking about "nexuses of leylines". That's what the Gods are. That so many people haven't heard of that concept is weird to me though.
The thing is, leylines (or ley lines) are not nomadic, nor are leyline nexuses (nexi?) ambulatory. Saying that the gods are leyline nexi when they can freely move around... to use Perkunas687's highway analogy, your intersection just got up and walked the f*** away.
I don't mind the gods being made of leylines. Leylines are the flow of mana and power on a world, Gods are the personifications of mana and power on a world, makes sense to me.
Im MUCH less enthused w/ Nissa mind tweaking a literal GOD, but I'm willing to give it to Kephnet already being so screwed up by Bolas that he's more vulnerable to this sort of attack, and I suppose it did state Nissa was on the edge of losing it. If this opens up a pathway for the gods to be free of Bolas later in the story I'll be cool w/ it.
Other things:
-Emrakul manipulating Nissa from across space and time? Sounds pretty sweet as a story hook though Idk why Emmy would bother. With this and Lili having the Raven man maybe every GW member can have a psychic-parasite buddy.
I really want to know more about the other 3 gods, colors, animal heads, etc. I doubt we ever will but I'd like to.
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UG Merfolk RG 8-Whack BWG Abzan midrange GRB Living End UWB Spirit Control
GU Kruphix's "Hug Assassin" RW Kalemne's "Play Fatties and Hope for the Best!" BUGW Atraxa's "All counters, all the time"
In high fantasy, a leyline is a flowing river of magic, and yes, it can move, it often don't, but it is possible.
Imagine the leylines as the lines of a magnetic field, and the god in question as a small magnet having this lines passing through itself, drawing mana from them and giving mana back.
I mean, very briefly looking through just a google search, plenty of examples of people talking about "nexuses of leylines". That's what the Gods are. That so many people haven't heard of that concept is weird to me though.
The thing is, leylines (or ley lines) are not nomadic, nor are leyline nexuses (nexi?) ambulatory. Saying that the gods are leyline nexi when they can freely move around... to use Perkunas687's highway analogy, your intersection just got up and walked the f*** away.
Okay? And ordinarily the moon isn't made of silver, look at Innistrad. It's not like every plane features Gods, but that's part of what makes Amonkhet what it is. Nexuses/Gods can move on Amonkhet.
May 3: Amonkhet Story 6
May 10: Amonkhet Story 7
May 17: Amonkhet Story 8
May 24: Q&A Podcast
May 31: Commander Anthology Story
June 7: Hour of Devastation stories begin!
I must say that I liked this story too. The whole leyline thing is just Nissas perspective, she sees mana currents as leylines, the gods are obviously made up of a complex network of those currents converging inside them, binding them and letting them interact with the plane itself in form of trials for example (and for everyone getting so angry about what a leyline supposedly should be, MANA is even more strange in that regard. I've heard many definitions of that one as well, either being used as "prestige" or the ability to change ones luck or power over the land etc.). Another mage not familiar with leylines but capable of sensing mana would probably just see a chaotic convergence of magic instead.
Also I believe that Bolas corruption itself made the god more vulnerable to further manipulation. Nissa only got the idea by observing the changes already done to Kefnet. It might have been a bit too fast for her to learn how to do a faulty and hasty manipulation herself, but it wasn't unbelievable. And as someone who likes non-evil Simic characters I appreciate her change to a somewhat more analytical person.
The symbolism in this story is a little bit too thick though. I think it will make more sense in the future, but the connection to Emrakul felt strange (even though I appreciate that she appeared at all). Bolas "They would take away my power." seems to hint that he went and corrupted Amonkhet directly before the mending if I'm not mistaken. How long has it been since that time?
All in all I liked Nissas last story a little bit more, but this one was pretty good as well. I'm still much more intrigued by Amonkhets story than Kaladeshs.
For all the Gideon story moments to happen we should see him next time, right?
I mean, very briefly looking through just a google search, plenty of examples of people talking about "nexuses of leylines". That's what the Gods are. That so many people haven't heard of that concept is weird to me though.
The thing is, leylines (or ley lines) are not nomadic, nor are leyline nexuses (nexi?) ambulatory. Saying that the gods are leyline nexi when they can freely move around... to use Perkunas687's highway analogy, your intersection just got up and walked the f*** away.
Okay? And ordinarily the moon isn't made of silver, look at Innistrad. It's not like every plane features Gods, but that's part of what makes Amonkhet what it is. Nexuses/Gods can move on Amonkhet.
My issue with that is that it's so different from leylines it might as well not be, and the only reason they're called that is because WotC's writers couldn't think of a way for Nissa to overcome Kefnet otherwise.
If we placed Chandra in Nissa's situation, how would she have overcome Kefnet? Well, in this case, it'd be because Kefnet just happens to be made of kindling. What bothers me, and I realise this is subjective, is that the story felt like it was written around Nissa's abilities. Instead of having Nissa Think of a clever way to overcome Kefnet, they instead asked "Ok, what can Nissa do. Answer: leylines. So how does she defeat Kefnet. Answer: he just happens to be made of leylines!"
It's so convenient that it breaks my suspencion of disbelief. How does the character who's magic is based around leylines defeat a God of Knowledge and telepathy? He conveniantly happens to be made of the one thing that the leyline-focused character can affect.
I like the "Concrete" vs. "Highway" analogy. And I'd add that we already have a perfectly appropriate term for the "concrete" in the setting: Mana. Mana does a lot more than just form leylines or move through them.
That said, I get that Nissa's main power is sensing and manipulating leylines, so that's how she mainly interacts with mana. Maybe it just could have been a little clearer that the leyline-centric narrative here was Nissa's particular perception. Just so long as Creative resists any tendency to over-identify mana with just being leylines in the future, and ideally give Nissa a little wider scope in how she works with mana.
So this is nowhere near as bad as Gideon v Ulamog(which mind you is a scene terribly exaggerated by many of the people here). The reason the highway and river metaphors are confusing is because it doesn't work, or only do to a point. Highways are inert. Once made they're just there. But leylines are active. Things, including random chance can change them without intelligent input. In many fantasy worlds, including ours, it is not unheard of for leylines and especially nexuses(nexi? Nexusese?) to randomly spawn magical phenomena. So for Kefnet to be inextricably linked with the leylines, and for his trial to be a weaving of them doesn't seem at all odd. As for Nissa being able to manipulate him that's not odd either. Saying she couldn't would be like saying someone with basic coding experience couldn't change a line of code in the system controlling the US nuclear arsenal. She tweak Kefnet's magical code just enough that he wouldn't kill her. And she was about to be dead anyway.
The only thing I have a problem with in this story is that the whole pawn, queen, hand thing seems like much more of a Lilliana thing. Everything else made sense, was entirely within power set and range, and was not a deus ex machina in the least.
I makes the gods seem pretty lame if anyone familiar with leylines can just walk up to them and take control. She instantly and radically altered his behavior. I mean obviously you can do that in the game but in the story it's a bit odd that they're so vulnerable. (Maybe Bolas modified them to make them easier to control but we've yet to see evidence of that)
I makes the gods seem pretty lame if anyone familiar with leylines can just walk up to them and take control. She instantly and radically altered his behavior. I mean obviously you can do that in the game but in the story it's a bit odd that they're so vulnerable. (Maybe Bolas modified them to make them easier to control but we've yet to see evidence of that)
Well, on Theros anyone can hypothetically create gods through enough believe (and atheism MIGHT be a threat to them). Sounds not very awe-inspiring on paper either. And Bolas already did change their basic programming (I already guessed before that the gods are very mechanical in nature on Amonkhet and I was proven right here). So for you the story is flawed from the start since Bolas corrupting the gods seems to be a pretty major plot point. If he could do it, why could no one else? And Nissa didn't take control of Kefnet, she only changed his attitude towards her slightly so he wouldn't instantly kill her. That's not really "taking control". For that she might neither be powerful nor analytical enough.
I makes the gods seem pretty lame if anyone familiar with leylines can just walk up to them and take control. She instantly and radically altered his behavior. I mean obviously you can do that in the game but in the story it's a bit odd that they're so vulnerable. (Maybe Bolas modified them to make them easier to control but we've yet to see evidence of that)
He presumably would be more vulnerable to manipulation, his defenses are already compromised by Bolas. And it's quite possible that tweak was easier because it's more in line with who the God originally was. But "don't kill me this one time" doesn't strike me as that radical, so maybe it's just me. Maybe later we will see other issues, but at least here it seems overblown.
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His trial being made of leylines is a little weirder, until you remember its made by him and not a normal mage. A being of the world should be able to shape the natural magic of the world to create their 'base'. So the trials should be made of leylines woven together to create a natural occurrence(think Bermuda triangle[if it was a real thing]), not magecraft.
I echo what some have said about Leylines being overused when mana would be better or more 'on-theme' for magic, but having said that Northjayhawk's breakdown on levels of magic above is a really good position that I endorse and think everyone should read (even if its a bit long).
What I wanted to add to the discussion was:
For those concerned that the Gatewatch will pull this one out of their A@#$ so they can do a 'Return to Amonkhet' block later down the line I do propose that Wizards could pull a very clever trick here... complete devastation of the plane would allow a return block to focus on the dusty tomb-raider tropes of Egyptian culture that they have largely avoided this time around.
Tamiyo came from Kamigawa, so clearly from the plane of proper character development she learnt how to be a one
Okay, despite all the flaws of the Gatewatch, Nissa is still my favorite character among the main 5 (I'm discounting Ajani off because he appeared for merely 1 block and from the sheer quantity of written material of each planeswalker it'll be quite unfair to compare him as a favorite with the rest even if he's a member on the surface).
That's not Emrakul. As much as I like the idea of "Nissa is Emrakul's Horcrux (or even better, Emrakul has 7 Horcruxes, counting the Moon and Tamiyo)" and the Eldrazi in general, even I highly doubt the story will take this route. The Trial of Knowledge was clearly designed to mess with memories, and we got one of the most vital pieces of memories - what Jace couldn't comprehend when he saw Nissa suffering approximately the same mental attack he did back then.
What I didn't really like was in that memory it implied Emrakul used the exact same tactic as it did on Jace. Emrakul proved capable of altering the same concept ("Existence is a chess game to me, I am the hand that moves life, the player of the game of existence") to a more understandable one to Gideon (remember pseudo-Erebos?). Nissa never striked me the type to play chess as well, which goes to show how screwed the retcon did to her backstory (to the point Emrakul couldn't find an example from her history). Unless Emrakul really did present something different to Nissa but presented the Jace Scenario to us as we're reading it because Emrakul knows we only witnessed what it did to Jace and knows we are reading about Nissa's memory now, but that's some fourth wall-breaking level (although that'll be awesome on a meta-level, it means Emrakul's mental deception abilities is capable of breaching our dimension).
As for the whole Kefnet scenario, I'll buy it - all she did was find a "change temper" switch on Kefnet himself, who is made of leylines and while her whole leyline business is indeed getting stale, this is still the first time an entire being (or five) was constructed from leylines. We recognize all the potential brokenness from that leyline gimmick, but to be fair other than Zendikar (which she had more or less mastery over and still required Chandra at the very least), she was nothing more than a "Planeswalker's Guide to the plane's mana flow and structure" (plot-wise she hardly harnessed the leylines themselves for anything game-breaking).
As for the other 3 Gods mystery, I'm beginning to think that since they are made of leylines, Bolas is artificially creating "Maelstroms" to devour (at this point Maelstroms being pure energy made of fermented leylines won't surprise me anymore). He sure isn't going to run into enough Alaras, so he'll have to create his own snack factory.
Hmmm, good point I hadn't thought of the fact that we already have a word (mana), my post was mostly a stream of consciousness.
Perhaps a leyline is a running river of mana. You can grab mana from a leyline. And some spells (or Gods) are so powerful that you need leylines to make them. Not just a cup of magic but a never-ending river of it.
The trial was generic. Whatever.
The leylines thing is . . . yeah stupid and actually confusing. Kefnet it made of leylines? What? They need creative to nail down the terminology.
Given I've read about leylines before though that might be part of why this isn't confusing. Leylines typically have places where they intersect, which are big locations of power. The Gods are that.
You wouldn't at least find it weird if someone describe a lake as "a tightly woven collection of rivers" rather than "a mass of water"?
I don't really get why calling it leylines instead of mana is throwing people, seems like people don't get how leylines and mana connects.
Think of it more like "the lake and the river are both made of H2O molecules."
But that's not what was said and not what people take issue with.
A leyline pretty much always (ie every time I've ever seen it referred to except in this exact story) refers to a large thing that possesses tremendous power. This implies that there are also little leylines that can be woven into relatively small objects. It is very much outside of the norm in a strange way and not for any apparent reason. Its like being given a wicker basket a being told it is woven out of tree trunks, that would be a weird redefinition of tree trunk and you'd probably ask if the person who said it knew what a tree trunk was and maybe they meant something else.
One possibility here is that the use of the term "leyline", which has a specific meaning, in this story, is because we are seeing things from Nissa's perspective. As a green mage heavily tied to the land, it makes sense that she would think of currents of mana (which is what we are all really talking about, I think) in terms of something she is most familiar with. To put it another way, Nissa's power is to manipulate currents of mana, and in this story, she figured out how to create a brand new and different type of one. Someone like Jace would probably conceptualize what Nissa did as as some form of essence alteration or magical reprogramming, but to green-oriented Nissa, she perceived what she did in terms of leylines.
Or maybe I'm giving the Creative Team too much credit.
The thing is, leylines (or ley lines) are not nomadic, nor are leyline nexuses (nexi?) ambulatory. Saying that the gods are leyline nexi when they can freely move around... to use Perkunas687's highway analogy, your intersection just got up and walked the f*** away.
Im MUCH less enthused w/ Nissa mind tweaking a literal GOD, but I'm willing to give it to Kephnet already being so screwed up by Bolas that he's more vulnerable to this sort of attack, and I suppose it did state Nissa was on the edge of losing it. If this opens up a pathway for the gods to be free of Bolas later in the story I'll be cool w/ it.
Other things:
-Emrakul manipulating Nissa from across space and time? Sounds pretty sweet as a story hook though Idk why Emmy would bother. With this and Lili having the Raven man maybe every GW member can have a psychic-parasite buddy.
I really want to know more about the other 3 gods, colors, animal heads, etc. I doubt we ever will but I'd like to.
RG 8-Whack
BWG Abzan midrange
GRB Living End
UWB Spirit Control
GU Kruphix's "Hug Assassin"
RW Kalemne's "Play Fatties and Hope for the Best!"
BUGW Atraxa's "All counters, all the time"
Imagine the leylines as the lines of a magnetic field, and the god in question as a small magnet having this lines passing through itself, drawing mana from them and giving mana back.
Okay? And ordinarily the moon isn't made of silver, look at Innistrad. It's not like every plane features Gods, but that's part of what makes Amonkhet what it is. Nexuses/Gods can move on Amonkhet.
May 3: Amonkhet Story 6
May 10: Amonkhet Story 7
May 17: Amonkhet Story 8
May 24: Q&A Podcast
May 31: Commander Anthology Story
June 7: Hour of Devastation stories begin!
Source:
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Also I believe that Bolas corruption itself made the god more vulnerable to further manipulation. Nissa only got the idea by observing the changes already done to Kefnet. It might have been a bit too fast for her to learn how to do a faulty and hasty manipulation herself, but it wasn't unbelievable. And as someone who likes non-evil Simic characters I appreciate her change to a somewhat more analytical person.
The symbolism in this story is a little bit too thick though. I think it will make more sense in the future, but the connection to Emrakul felt strange (even though I appreciate that she appeared at all). Bolas "They would take away my power." seems to hint that he went and corrupted Amonkhet directly before the mending if I'm not mistaken. How long has it been since that time?
All in all I liked Nissas last story a little bit more, but this one was pretty good as well. I'm still much more intrigued by Amonkhets story than Kaladeshs.
For all the Gideon story moments to happen we should see him next time, right?
My issue with that is that it's so different from leylines it might as well not be, and the only reason they're called that is because WotC's writers couldn't think of a way for Nissa to overcome Kefnet otherwise.
If we placed Chandra in Nissa's situation, how would she have overcome Kefnet? Well, in this case, it'd be because Kefnet just happens to be made of kindling. What bothers me, and I realise this is subjective, is that the story felt like it was written around Nissa's abilities. Instead of having Nissa Think of a clever way to overcome Kefnet, they instead asked "Ok, what can Nissa do. Answer: leylines. So how does she defeat Kefnet. Answer: he just happens to be made of leylines!"
It's so convenient that it breaks my suspencion of disbelief. How does the character who's magic is based around leylines defeat a God of Knowledge and telepathy? He conveniantly happens to be made of the one thing that the leyline-focused character can affect.
That said, I get that Nissa's main power is sensing and manipulating leylines, so that's how she mainly interacts with mana. Maybe it just could have been a little clearer that the leyline-centric narrative here was Nissa's particular perception. Just so long as Creative resists any tendency to over-identify mana with just being leylines in the future, and ideally give Nissa a little wider scope in how she works with mana.
The only thing I have a problem with in this story is that the whole pawn, queen, hand thing seems like much more of a Lilliana thing. Everything else made sense, was entirely within power set and range, and was not a deus ex machina in the least.
Well, on Theros anyone can hypothetically create gods through enough believe (and atheism MIGHT be a threat to them). Sounds not very awe-inspiring on paper either. And Bolas already did change their basic programming (I already guessed before that the gods are very mechanical in nature on Amonkhet and I was proven right here). So for you the story is flawed from the start since Bolas corrupting the gods seems to be a pretty major plot point. If he could do it, why could no one else? And Nissa didn't take control of Kefnet, she only changed his attitude towards her slightly so he wouldn't instantly kill her. That's not really "taking control". For that she might neither be powerful nor analytical enough.
He presumably would be more vulnerable to manipulation, his defenses are already compromised by Bolas. And it's quite possible that tweak was easier because it's more in line with who the God originally was. But "don't kill me this one time" doesn't strike me as that radical, so maybe it's just me. Maybe later we will see other issues, but at least here it seems overblown.