Like I said in the main Amonkhet thread, I'm not convinced that they were his goal. But if it was there are plenty of things he can do if he is able to send them through the planar portal.
Also I find it thoroughly amusing that the mystery of Bolas' purpose on Amonkhet has been harder to figure out than the mystery of the mystery set Shadows Over Innistrad.
Well, being the dungeon master that I am and having to think up reasonable explanations for otherwise completely nonsensical villains and their hatchet schemes, Nicol Bolas likely is using the eternals as an experiment and actually has zero interest in the plane of Amonkhet. He likely came back to see how the experiment turned out and to clean up loose ends, which means glassing what is left of all known life on the plane and leaving the dead to putter out on their own from entropy.
Now he "might" have had a plan with the planar bridge as it would allow him to at least use his zealot undead super soldier army to take on another plane that is more suitable for kingdom building, but given he is a dragon with a near indefinite lifespan he can bide his time doing just about whatever he wants.
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Okay, here's my first post. Hope I make some sense.
I get the feeling Bolas deliberately created the Eternals. Mining the material lazotep which coats all the eternals was one of the things the servant zombies did, and I doubt that something like the Eternals could just be accidentally created. Also, he deliberately instituted the process that provided him with specimens, the Trials.
As to what he wants with them, I doubt our puny mortal minds can fathom his reasons.
Okay, seriously, I expect that if he didn't have a reason when he began this beyond seeing if he could, he has come up with a use for them by now. In conjunction with the Planar Bridge he has a powerful undead army he can bring with him to any plane, but since the Bridge was possibly one of the few things in the Multiverse that could truly surprise and/or interest him, I think he had another use in mind. I doubt even he was able to plan for and/or manipulate the creation of the Bridge, so I suspect he has a different reason for creating the Eternals. A zombie army is all well and good, but it seems like too small an idea for Bolas. Maybe they are the first step in an attempt to gain control of the entire Curse of Wandering. Think about it, Bolas being able to raise any dead being he wanted to as an obedient servant.
Now I wish I hadn't thought of that because the idea terrifies me.
Nicol bolas took the plane 60 years ago. 60 years before the Planar bridge was even a thing. He doesn't have any other known method of transportation across planes, and I may be wrong, but I don't think he even knew tezzeret back then. I know he works decades and even centuries in advance, but to suggest that moving an army off world was always his goal in nonsensical.
It also doesn't do much of anything to give him back the power that was stolen from him like, say, the maelstrom would have. It just gives him an army.
To suggest that this would give him some kind of edge is also nonsense, since these things aren't any more powerful than the Eldrazi, and the zendikari were able to push back and defeat the Eldrazi a number of times, and the Eldrazi were able to recover from their losses where lazotep is a finite resource and we have no indication that the Eternals can come back after defeated. And since their method of production is now gone, he has no way to make more.
As this has only been going on for 60 years, the first decade or two of which he got zero Worthy because nobody was old enough to take the trials, and that a lot of people supposedly don't even take the trials, and just as many give up, and even more so die horribly on the road to glory, Bolas can't even have all that many of these things in the first place.
We also have no reason to believe that he can take the gods off world with him, one because of their connection to the plane, and two because he had literally no reason not to if he could. They seem to be far more powerful and useful than am army of mindless stone temple pilots.
So if the army really was what he was after, I really can't wrap my head around it, because a lot of things would have to go right for it to even work, let alone be a viable strategy to get whatever else ultimately wants.
Bolas freely admits to siring races on a whim just to watch them kill themselves. So not only is he guilty of countless examples of genocide just to stave off boredom, he also is guilty of rape to do so. He has no real endgoal besides being evil.
Bolas freely admits to siring races on a whim just to watch them kill themselves. So not only is he guilty of countless examples of genocide just to stave off boredom, he also is guilty of rape to do so. He has no real endgoal besides being evil.
Doesn't seem to be any implication of rape. Creating a race to watch it destroy itself isn't genocide either. Also doing it just for funsies doesn't seem like a Bolas thing to do. I'm sure he got some useful information from the experiment.
I really just can't buy into Bolas' just making the eternals.
Why would he waste his last few remaining days of oldwalker god-like power setting up a plane to create a small undead army that it simply may never even be possible for him to move from one plane to another post mending?
I really just can't buy into Bolas' just making the eternals.
Why would he waste his last few remaining days of oldwalker god-like power setting up a plane to create a small undead army that it simply may never even be possible for him to move from one plane to another post mending?
Maybe you're on to something here. Why WOULD he waste his last few days of oldwalker power doing this? Well if you were Nicol Bolas, wouldn't your goal be if you at one stage in your existence had god-like power, to return to having god-like power at some stage??
The focus here isn't the army itself, it's likely the lazotep. It might contain some kind of secret to getting oldwalker-level power back. Perhaps it can work like powerstones and be used to contain planeswalker sparks, but because it's been fused into a sentient (but completely obedient undead) creature, it may facilitate a planeswalking ability for that creature. That would grant him much less reliance on keeping in his employ independent planeswalkers that might betray him like Tezz. He might launch a crusade to hunt down planeswalkers all over the Multiverse to harvest their sparks for his Eternals, and maybe when he has enough, he might be able to channel them into him and turn him into an oldwalker, possibly stabilised by the proximity of the lazotep. Sure this is helped by his access to his new Planar Bridge, but the plan could function without it!
I don't think that quite fits either, since we know that (most if not all of) the Gatewatch survives their encounter with Bolas*. If he wanted to harvest Sparks, why would he let them live/escape?
*Realistically WotC isn't killing off their much (self)lauded protagonist group in Amonkhet. Nissa looks to be involved in post-Bolas rebuilding, Chandra and Liliana are very popular and we know for certain due to leaks that Jace survives at the least. Gideon has too much set-up for his return to Theros to die here.
I really just can't buy into Bolas' just making the eternals.
Why would he waste his last few remaining days of oldwalker god-like power setting up a plane to create a small undead army that it simply may never even be possible for him to move from one plane to another post mending?
Maybe you're on to something here. Why WOULD he waste his last few days of oldwalker power doing this? Well if you were Nicol Bolas, wouldn't your goal be if you at one stage in your existence had god-like power, to return to having god-like power at some stage??
The focus here isn't the army itself, it's likely the lazotep. It might contain some kind of secret to getting oldwalker-level power back. Perhaps it can work like powerstones and be used to contain planeswalker sparks, but because it's been fused into a sentient (but completely obedient undead) creature, it may facilitate a planeswalking ability for that creature. That would grant him much less reliance on keeping in his employ independent planeswalkers that might betray him like Tezz. He might launch a crusade to hunt down planeswalkers all over the Multiverse to harvest their sparks for his Eternals, and maybe when he has enough, he might be able to channel them into him and turn him into an oldwalker, possibly stabilised by the proximity of the lazotep. Sure this is helped by his access to his new Planar Bridge, but the plan could function without it!
That is a really good point I hadn't considered, probably because by the time I got interested in Magic all that old/new-walker stuff had already happened and I only started paying close attention to the story maybe two years ago. I can't see Bolas using the last of his oldwalker powers on anything that isn't going to be Multiverse-shaking when it plays out. At first I wasn't sure if a spark could be moved around but I checked and there is precedent for it, though I don't know if it works now because it happened in original Mirrodan and I don't know if that was pre- or post-Mending. Infusing zombies he controls, all of whom are the best warriors a plane had to offer, with sparks would give him a formidable force. The main problem at the moment is that we simply don't have enough info on Amonkhet to know if it's even possible for lazotep to work that way.
I wonder if when they reveal his motivations it will be one of those times where everyone facepalms because it is obvious in retrospect or if they are going to add a new element at the time of reveal, something that makes this seemingly meaningless side-show significant. I get the feeling it's going to be the latter, since they've given us very little to work with.
from all the amonkhet story line I've read, and what I know about bolas, it seems that he was likely farming for planeswalkers to have as loyal slaves. tezzeret betrayed him because he had a life before bolas and did not want to stay a thrall of bolas. same for sarkhan, but, imagine a plane literally dedicated to him, where people actively strive towards death, which is what typically ignites the planeswalkers spark.
so, he takes control of the planes, twists their rituals into a way to weed out the unworthy that won't have a spark ignited, then razaketh, who has been waiting and watching the plane for bolas, tells him of anyone who may have sparked and walked away. He now has someone whose entire life has been dedicated to him that can travel between planes.
had Samut not discovered the stuff she had, she may very well have been the walker that bolas wanted. this is assuming I'm right with all this of course.
Truth be told, Nissa had seen in her visions how Amonkhet was simply one world of many. Bolas may have done something similar on dozens of other worlds. His interplanar army would not be just eternals. They would simply be one single piece.
Truth be told, Nissa had seen in her visions how Amonkhet was simply one world of many. Bolas may have done something similar on dozens of other worlds. His interplanar army would not be just eternals. They would simply be one single piece.
All I can think of, in the vast multiverse somewhere and somehow, Nicol Bolas has a trained army of squirrels.
Y'know, Bolas is a 20,000 year old Elder Dragon with multiple brains he can separate and dedicate to different tasks. He can bring Planeswalkers back from the dead, and create century old plans.
If you think for one second he needed Rashmi to create a planar portal to ferry around his cultivated personal armies from the dozens of planes he's ravaged, you haven't been paying attention.
What's more likely is Tezzeret still wants to be the Father of Machines on Phyrexia, and providing them a means to invade other planes for compleation is a pretty sound way to get what he wants. I don't think Tezzeret was working for Bolas at all - notice how we saw and heard nothing of Tezzeret in the whole of Amonkhet? He probably sent Lili there to keep the Gatewatch occupied while he follows his own path.
Planar portal technology would very likely have been known to Bolas before Tezzeret's mission on Kaladesh. Original Phyrexia used planar portals extensively in their invasion of Dominaria, and Urza also used such technology in the Weatherlight.
Now, perhaps interplanar transportation changed or became harder after the Mending; I don't know if there are any canonical sources that address that. But it is established that there have been various methods of enabling non-planeswalker planeshifting in the past. And if any currently-existing person would know about them, it would be Bolas.
Nicol bolas took the plane 60 years ago. 60 years before the Planar bridge was even a thing. He doesn't have any other known method of transportation across planes, and I may be wrong, but I don't think he even knew tezzeret back then. I know he works decades and even centuries in advance, but to suggest that moving an army off world was always his goal in nonsensical.
They're zombies coated in magical metal. Its not like they go bad or anything. Bolas has good reason to believe that he'll find a method of transporting others between planes, its been done before.
I think it's worth noting that it was the Paradox Engine that convinced Tezzeret to take a harder look at Kaladesh, based on its flavour text.
It has no in-story significance, but if that weird artifact didn't exist, I think it's likely he would have just moved on to some other plane. I mention this because it makes the likelihood that Bolas was banking on finding a planar portal there even lower.
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"Knowledge is such a burden. Release it. Release all your fears to me."
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The Planar Bridge from Kaladesh.
All the pieces are starting to come together now.
Step 1: Get an Army of Eternals.
Step 2: Get a method of moving them between planes (the Planar Bridge).
Step 3: ???
Step 4: PROFIT!
What's Step 3? What we don't know is the purpose of the Eternal Army.
Also I find it thoroughly amusing that the mystery of Bolas' purpose on Amonkhet has been harder to figure out than the mystery of the mystery set Shadows Over Innistrad.
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—Ashiok, Nightmare Weaver
Now he "might" have had a plan with the planar bridge as it would allow him to at least use his zealot undead super soldier army to take on another plane that is more suitable for kingdom building, but given he is a dragon with a near indefinite lifespan he can bide his time doing just about whatever he wants.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Eh? Eh?
I get the feeling Bolas deliberately created the Eternals. Mining the material lazotep which coats all the eternals was one of the things the servant zombies did, and I doubt that something like the Eternals could just be accidentally created. Also, he deliberately instituted the process that provided him with specimens, the Trials.
As to what he wants with them, I doubt our puny mortal minds can fathom his reasons.
Okay, seriously, I expect that if he didn't have a reason when he began this beyond seeing if he could, he has come up with a use for them by now. In conjunction with the Planar Bridge he has a powerful undead army he can bring with him to any plane, but since the Bridge was possibly one of the few things in the Multiverse that could truly surprise and/or interest him, I think he had another use in mind. I doubt even he was able to plan for and/or manipulate the creation of the Bridge, so I suspect he has a different reason for creating the Eternals. A zombie army is all well and good, but it seems like too small an idea for Bolas. Maybe they are the first step in an attempt to gain control of the entire Curse of Wandering. Think about it, Bolas being able to raise any dead being he wanted to as an obedient servant.
Now I wish I hadn't thought of that because the idea terrifies me.
It also doesn't do much of anything to give him back the power that was stolen from him like, say, the maelstrom would have. It just gives him an army.
To suggest that this would give him some kind of edge is also nonsense, since these things aren't any more powerful than the Eldrazi, and the zendikari were able to push back and defeat the Eldrazi a number of times, and the Eldrazi were able to recover from their losses where lazotep is a finite resource and we have no indication that the Eternals can come back after defeated. And since their method of production is now gone, he has no way to make more.
As this has only been going on for 60 years, the first decade or two of which he got zero Worthy because nobody was old enough to take the trials, and that a lot of people supposedly don't even take the trials, and just as many give up, and even more so die horribly on the road to glory, Bolas can't even have all that many of these things in the first place.
We also have no reason to believe that he can take the gods off world with him, one because of their connection to the plane, and two because he had literally no reason not to if he could. They seem to be far more powerful and useful than am army of mindless stone temple pilots.
So if the army really was what he was after, I really can't wrap my head around it, because a lot of things would have to go right for it to even work, let alone be a viable strategy to get whatever else ultimately wants.
Doesn't seem to be any implication of rape. Creating a race to watch it destroy itself isn't genocide either. Also doing it just for funsies doesn't seem like a Bolas thing to do. I'm sure he got some useful information from the experiment.
Why would he waste his last few remaining days of oldwalker god-like power setting up a plane to create a small undead army that it simply may never even be possible for him to move from one plane to another post mending?
I don't think that quite fits either, since we know that (most if not all of) the Gatewatch survives their encounter with Bolas*. If he wanted to harvest Sparks, why would he let them live/escape?
*Realistically WotC isn't killing off their much (self)lauded protagonist group in Amonkhet. Nissa looks to be involved in post-Bolas rebuilding, Chandra and Liliana are very popular and we know for certain due to leaks that Jace survives at the least. Gideon has too much set-up for his return to Theros to die here.
That is a really good point I hadn't considered, probably because by the time I got interested in Magic all that old/new-walker stuff had already happened and I only started paying close attention to the story maybe two years ago. I can't see Bolas using the last of his oldwalker powers on anything that isn't going to be Multiverse-shaking when it plays out. At first I wasn't sure if a spark could be moved around but I checked and there is precedent for it, though I don't know if it works now because it happened in original Mirrodan and I don't know if that was pre- or post-Mending. Infusing zombies he controls, all of whom are the best warriors a plane had to offer, with sparks would give him a formidable force. The main problem at the moment is that we simply don't have enough info on Amonkhet to know if it's even possible for lazotep to work that way.
I wonder if when they reveal his motivations it will be one of those times where everyone facepalms because it is obvious in retrospect or if they are going to add a new element at the time of reveal, something that makes this seemingly meaningless side-show significant. I get the feeling it's going to be the latter, since they've given us very little to work with.
so, he takes control of the planes, twists their rituals into a way to weed out the unworthy that won't have a spark ignited, then razaketh, who has been waiting and watching the plane for bolas, tells him of anyone who may have sparked and walked away. He now has someone whose entire life has been dedicated to him that can travel between planes.
had Samut not discovered the stuff she had, she may very well have been the walker that bolas wanted. this is assuming I'm right with all this of course.
If you think for one second he needed Rashmi to create a planar portal to ferry around his cultivated personal armies from the dozens of planes he's ravaged, you haven't been paying attention.
What's more likely is Tezzeret still wants to be the Father of Machines on Phyrexia, and providing them a means to invade other planes for compleation is a pretty sound way to get what he wants. I don't think Tezzeret was working for Bolas at all - notice how we saw and heard nothing of Tezzeret in the whole of Amonkhet? He probably sent Lili there to keep the Gatewatch occupied while he follows his own path.
If Bolas wanted a planar portal, he'd make one.
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Now, perhaps interplanar transportation changed or became harder after the Mending; I don't know if there are any canonical sources that address that. But it is established that there have been various methods of enabling non-planeswalker planeshifting in the past. And if any currently-existing person would know about them, it would be Bolas.
They're zombies coated in magical metal. Its not like they go bad or anything. Bolas has good reason to believe that he'll find a method of transporting others between planes, its been done before.
It has no in-story significance, but if that weird artifact didn't exist, I think it's likely he would have just moved on to some other plane. I mention this because it makes the likelihood that Bolas was banking on finding a planar portal there even lower.