That's the novel, though. Barely anyone reads the novels; that's why they switched to ebooks. For good or for ill, the vast majority of Magic players get their info on the storyline from the cards.
Except the novels are the official story. Players can make up whatever ideas they want about the characters. Heck, they can even believe that Xenagos was born a woman and used a gender-bender spell during an experimental time in college. But that doesn't make it canon.
Given the conditions of her demise, I can imagine her coming back as a plane traveling traveling soul collector under the service of Erebos with all memories of her past life erased.
Just to clear some confusion:
*NOVEL SPOILERS AHEAD*
To enter nyx, Elspeth had to complete an ordeal for one of the gods, she chose Erebos because she wanted to return Daxos to life. After she completed her ordeal and had slain Xenagos she could ask Erebos a favor. She asked Erebos to return Daxos to life and offered her life in return. Heliod didn't kill her purely out of spite (I'm pretty sure he kinda wanted to because he's a giant prick but that doesn't matter) she had to die so Erebos could claim her. Nylea tried to save her but she wanted to die so Daxos could live again.
It was halfway between wanting Daxos to live again and being too exhausted to raise any defense against Heliod.
Given that Daxos isn't living again, she might change her mind on that.
Except the novels are the official story. Players can make up whatever ideas they want about the characters. Heck, they can even believe that Xenagos was born a woman and used a gender-bender spell during an experimental time in college. But that doesn't make it canon.
MtG's primary medium is the cards, though. I'm not asking for every plot point to be spelled out on the cards, like in Tempest block. I just feel that they should actually characterize the villain as being villainous.
I mean, Innistrad block didn't need a novel to tell us just how bad Avacyn's absence was. I don't see what was so hard about conveying the idea that Xenagos winning would be a bad thing.
Except the novels are the official story. Players can make up whatever ideas they want about the characters. Heck, they can even believe that Xenagos was born a woman and used a gender-bender spell during an experimental time in college. But that doesn't make it canon.
MtG's primary medium is the cards, though. I'm not asking for every plot point to be spelled out on the cards, like in Tempest block. I just feel that they should actually characterize the villain as being villainous.
I mean, Innistrad block didn't need a novel to tell us just how bad Avacyn's absence was. I don't see what was so hard about conveying the idea that Xenagos winning would be a bad thing.
It's because of the way they did it in the story. Everyone was pretty much in the dark about Xenagos until it was too late, and even then, his ascension is what took focus. On Innistrad, the Avacyn part of the story was told mostly after the fact. And as far as sets go, Avacyn Restored shook things up more than Journey Into Nyx, so naturally any story developments would be easier to see.
It's because of the way they did it in the story. Everyone was pretty much in the dark about Xenagos until it was too late, and even then, his ascension is what took focus. On Innistrad, the Avacyn part of the story was told mostly after the fact.
Just because the characters are in the dark, doesn't men that the audience has to be as well. Especially about something as fundamental as the reasons why letting the antagonist win is bad.
In Scars block, they made sure the audience knew that the Phyrexians were bad news long before the Mirrans even knew of the Phyrexians' presence.
No... Not Elspeth... Please no... She's my favorite Planeswalker character and I really don't want her to go, her story is so sad and full of pain, it doesn't deserve to end like this... Elspeth is one of the best Magic characters... why did they have to kill her? From the sounds of it, it didn't even really add to the story either... God damn it, I am so upset right now.
Part of the reason I loved Theros so much was that Elspeth had the starring role, and now this?
*sigh*
Also my daughters favorite character... I'm not going to tell her what happened.
...Another lame move by WOTC in a series of Lame moves. Does Wizards think these things through? Spend countless cards, manpower, time to invent a cool character... and kill her off for ??? Disappointed. Where are the strong female characters now? (Please don't say Lilly or Chandra...)
No... Not Elspeth... Please no... She's my favorite Planeswalker character and I really don't want her to go, her story is so sad and full of pain, it doesn't deserve to end like this... Elspeth is one of the best Magic characters... why did they have to kill her? From the sounds of it, it didn't even really add to the story either... God damn it, I am so upset right now.
Part of the reason I loved Theros so much was that Elspeth had the starring role, and now this?
*sigh*
Also my daughters favorite character... I'm not going to tell her what happened.
...Another lame move by WOTC in a series of Lame moves. Does Wizards think these things through? Spend countless cards, manpower, time to invent a cool character... and kill her off for ??? Disappointed. Where are the strong female characters now? (Please don't say Lilly or Chandra...)
Whats's wrong with Chandra and especially Lily? She is certainly the strongest female character power-wise and would never back down from a goal that she wants to reach. Just dont expect her to ever run around and help people without getting something in return.
I actually do like Chandra and Liliana, but it just sucks to see a strong female character killed off for no real reason at all... Maybe it's because my main source of media is video games, but good, strong female characters seem so rare and it just sucks that not only did they kill one of the best ones, but they did such a poor job of it, her story shouldn't end this way, her story was so painful as it is...
Ah it just sucks that such a good character like Elspeth gets killed off, but we're stuck with characters like Jace :c
I'm just hoping that Erebos decides she's too useful to die and decides to keep her alive for his own ends or something.
After all the bad things in her life, she was finally sucessful at something... Only for... that to happen... her story can't end here.
Tell that to Heliod, who is the second most selfish character in the story. Only behind Xenagos himself. Could someone even point out a page number where he shows a single white trait?
Have not read the story just throwing around ideas.
Yes Elspeth is still alive in some way or form, does that mean Xenagos is to? Could they work together to get out of the underworld with there minds still intact? Could Erebos use her (or Both) to get at Heliod? and if Elspeth lost her spark there could be ways of getting it back (a God way, a Nyx way, or Xenagos old Spark?)
Shes coming back somehow but she still needs her mind, there is so much for her to finish to just let it all be forgotten (aka her coming back with a mask thing)
Who's to say that Xenagos isn't a heroic figure to a degree?
To a small degree, I suppose. In the sense that the people he's opposing are also horrible people. Still doesn't make him a good person.
A hero does not have to be a good person, Magic has a long history of that, so does Greek myth.
He's seen as a "cool bro" outside the game for the same reason he was catapulted to godhood in the game. People think his cause is awesome. You have to dig a little deeper to understand why he is the antagonist.
His ultimate intentions are noble as far as we know, he just wants to expose the lies of the gods and free Theros from their tyranny.
He became disillusioned after discovering just how vast the multiverse is compared to how insignificant he is, so he wants to rub the gods' faces in the fact that they're not so special. That's not noble. That's classic bully behavior; making other people feel bad in order to feel better about your own woes.
I don't think a mortal can really bully gods. He sees it as weakening the grip of brutal dictators.
He starts riots and wars for fun, lots of people have cheered for anarchist villains.
It's not the fact that he's an anarchist that's the problem, it's the fact that he's a sociopath. FYI: starting riots and wars to topple the government is anarchistic, starting riots and wars for fun is sociopathic.
I wouldn't call it sociopathic. He's an RG character, after all, and a satyr. Wars and riots are just bigger parties. More real and more visceral. People are freed from the bindings of civilized behavior.
I mean, Innistrad block didn't need a novel to tell us just how bad Avacyn's absence was. I don't see what was so hard about conveying the idea that Xenagos winning would be a bad thing.
Avacyn was literally the angel of safety and humanity. As an MTG Angel she is literally a one note character.
[quote from="AMagicalGirl" url="http://www.mtgsalvation.com/forums/magic-fundamentals/the-rumor-mill/558578-elspeths-fate-novel-spoilers-ahead?comment=16"]Where are the strong female characters now? (Please don't say Lilly or Chandra...)
Elspeth was the weakest of the three....she ran away a lot. Liliana kills anything that annoys her and Chandra burns anyone who challenges her. If it was Liliana in Theros, she would have wiped out everyone for vexing her.
Also, did Heliod kill her with godsend because that only exiles her and doesn't destroy her....to my knowledge of the card.
In a discussion involving "strong female characters," power level is irrelevant. What we're talking about here is if the female characters in questions have any sense of agency, which we can say "yes" to for all three. Less Elspeth, though, but her entire character development was about becoming the hero she was meant to be.
Elspeth is confirmed dead, not exiled. Whether she leaves the underworld, though, is another matter.
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You might as well lock and delete it then. The issue is widely known in Storyline forum. I posted that in Mill to inform the people who does even not know that we have a storyline forum.
You have the right to do it, of course, but I think that this was not a good call. But whatever.
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Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
I was wrong earlier. Jenna confirmed that Heliod's blow was, as expected, lethal and that Elspeth did indeed die. However, she ended by saying "But this is Theros and that's not the end of the story." Or something of that nature. Check the end of this video:
Now I'm a bit curious-
Heliod has been a paranoid pillicock for the entire block,
but his actions still fell within the realm of W.
When his paranoia became so great that he killed Elspeth,
especially in such a brutal and "unofficial" way,
rather than banishing her or imprisoning her,
did he not officially cross into B?
I don't see anything remotely W about murdering someone you (incorrectly) see as a threat to your dominance.
Augustin IV, Konda, Walbert and Serra strongly disagree with you. White has shown again and again the capacity to be viciously paranoid and backstabbing, and more than willing to execute whoever threatens it's rule.
The difference is that Black is aware of doing this kind of thing for personal reasons, while White either tries to justify it or really doesn't think about the implications.
At least Elesh is evil because she is OP and frightfuly devoted to white's negative trait of being willing to do anything so that all will be one/equal/fair.
Heliod is just a black character they made white cause they couln't have Zeus be BR like a selfish hedonist would actually be.
Actually, Elesh Norn is also motivated by her personal ambitions and it's implied that she's using the Machine Orthodoxy to gain power. From the old flash site, she defenitely was attempting to get in Karn's good graces.
White is not above selfishness, it's just that it values above all morality. As Maro put it, the difference between Black and White villains is that the former are completly aware of the wrongness of what they're doing.
Also, Zeus is White/Red. God of order, morality and light + lightning, storms and being an impulsive prick.
I find it very sad that Elspeth and Liliana are the only female characters who actually have a personality. Chandra has an archetype, not a personality, the rest of the females are non-entities, just a couple quotes in flavor text but notthing that actually gives us an understanding of how they think and what they would do in certain situations.
I find it very sad that Elspeth and Liliana are the only female characters who actually have a personality. Chandra has an archetype, not a personality, the rest of the females are non-entities, just a couple quotes in flavor text but notthing that actually gives us an understanding of how they think and what they would do in certain situations.
You... do know that Chandra had an entire book told from her point of view, right?
Because that gave us a pretty healthy look into her psyche.
Really, you should ignore the flavor text, that's what causes problems with characterization.
Also, Kiora and Vraska have been very important subjects of the storyline recently, so we definitely get to see their personalities (though Vraska's, sadly, is very inconsistent)
I don't understand why people think Elspeth is weak just because she ran away.
After what she went through, running away is a perfectly natural and human reaction.
As a child her home plane was taken other by tyrants (I remember reading that they were phyrexians? but I'm not sure if that's true though.) and was only saved due to an ignited spark, on Bant, she found a place to call home. During the Conflux she watched her home become changed forever, and then watched as it was slowly overran by Grixis, and she just couldn't bare to watch another home be lost, so she fled... that reaction isn't weak... it's a very human reaction.
Hell despite all that she still fought to help save the Mirrans from the Phyrexians but... that was always going to be a losing battle, and the only reason she left was that Koth gave her no other choice and she would have died had she stayed and they both knew that.
On Theros she slayed a hydra (as well as the legendary one Polukranos when it fell from Nyx, I'm pretty sure it's mentioned she does, while the hydra the promotional materials show is red, so I guess she killed both.) and helped lead Akroan troops against the Minotaurs, and when the aftermath of that event caused Xenagos' ascension, she was blamed by Heliod, so she fled, because when a God with a known track record of holding a grudge is mad at you, it's best to make oneself scarce.
She did one run because she was weak, she ran because she was scared and I'm so tired of people calling her weak just because she fled, because scared doesn't make you weak, Elspeth lost her home twice, and then fought an a losing battle against monsters, and then she went to a world she thought would have no need to be a hero... on which she was called to be one, and was then blamed for someone else's actions.
Elspeth is not weak, she is human.
Apologies for the rant... I've had that on my chest for a long time now
Except the novels are the official story. Players can make up whatever ideas they want about the characters. Heck, they can even believe that Xenagos was born a woman and used a gender-bender spell during an experimental time in college. But that doesn't make it canon.
It was halfway between wanting Daxos to live again and being too exhausted to raise any defense against Heliod.
Given that Daxos isn't living again, she might change her mind on that.
MtG's primary medium is the cards, though. I'm not asking for every plot point to be spelled out on the cards, like in Tempest block. I just feel that they should actually characterize the villain as being villainous.
I mean, Innistrad block didn't need a novel to tell us just how bad Avacyn's absence was. I don't see what was so hard about conveying the idea that Xenagos winning would be a bad thing.
It's because of the way they did it in the story. Everyone was pretty much in the dark about Xenagos until it was too late, and even then, his ascension is what took focus. On Innistrad, the Avacyn part of the story was told mostly after the fact. And as far as sets go, Avacyn Restored shook things up more than Journey Into Nyx, so naturally any story developments would be easier to see.
Just because the characters are in the dark, doesn't men that the audience has to be as well. Especially about something as fundamental as the reasons why letting the antagonist win is bad.
In Scars block, they made sure the audience knew that the Phyrexians were bad news long before the Mirrans even knew of the Phyrexians' presence.
Also my daughters favorite character... I'm not going to tell her what happened.
...Another lame move by WOTC in a series of Lame moves. Does Wizards think these things through? Spend countless cards, manpower, time to invent a cool character... and kill her off for ??? Disappointed. Where are the strong female characters now? (Please don't say Lilly or Chandra...)
...Nissa of course!!!
Whats's wrong with Chandra and especially Lily? She is certainly the strongest female character power-wise and would never back down from a goal that she wants to reach. Just dont expect her to ever run around and help people without getting something in return.
Ah it just sucks that such a good character like Elspeth gets killed off, but we're stuck with characters like Jace :c
I'm just hoping that Erebos decides she's too useful to die and decides to keep her alive for his own ends or something.
After all the bad things in her life, she was finally sucessful at something... Only for... that to happen... her story can't end here.
Tell that to Heliod, who is the second most selfish character in the story. Only behind Xenagos himself. Could someone even point out a page number where he shows a single white trait?
Yes Elspeth is still alive in some way or form, does that mean Xenagos is to? Could they work together to get out of the underworld with there minds still intact? Could Erebos use her (or Both) to get at Heliod? and if Elspeth lost her spark there could be ways of getting it back (a God way, a Nyx way, or Xenagos old Spark?)
Shes coming back somehow but she still needs her mind, there is so much for her to finish to just let it all be forgotten (aka her coming back with a mask thing)
A hero does not have to be a good person, Magic has a long history of that, so does Greek myth.
He's seen as a "cool bro" outside the game for the same reason he was catapulted to godhood in the game. People think his cause is awesome. You have to dig a little deeper to understand why he is the antagonist.
I don't think a mortal can really bully gods. He sees it as weakening the grip of brutal dictators.
I wouldn't call it sociopathic. He's an RG character, after all, and a satyr. Wars and riots are just bigger parties. More real and more visceral. People are freed from the bindings of civilized behavior.
Avacyn was literally the angel of safety and humanity. As an MTG Angel she is literally a one note character.
https://twitch.tv/annorax10 (classic retro speedruns & occasional MTGO/MTGA screwaround streams)
https://twitch.tv/SwiftorCasino (yes, my team and I run live dealer games for the baldman using his channel points as chips)
Maybe it'll line up with Game Day this weekend?
In a discussion involving "strong female characters," power level is irrelevant. What we're talking about here is if the female characters in questions have any sense of agency, which we can say "yes" to for all three. Less Elspeth, though, but her entire character development was about becoming the hero she was meant to be.
Elspeth is confirmed dead, not exiled. Whether she leaves the underworld, though, is another matter.
Cōnservātum album delenda est.
You might as well lock and delete it then. The issue is widely known in Storyline forum. I posted that in Mill to inform the people who does even not know that we have a storyline forum.
You have the right to do it, of course, but I think that this was not a good call. But whatever.
Let this great clan rest in peace (2001-2011)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FBlsg1PBZI
|| UW Jace, Vyn's Prodigy UW || UG Kenessos, Priest of Thassa (feat. Arixmethes) UG ||
Cards I still want to see created:
|| Olantin, Lost City || Pavios and Thanasis || Choryu ||
Augustin IV, Konda, Walbert and Serra strongly disagree with you. White has shown again and again the capacity to be viciously paranoid and backstabbing, and more than willing to execute whoever threatens it's rule.
The difference is that Black is aware of doing this kind of thing for personal reasons, while White either tries to justify it or really doesn't think about the implications.
Actually, Elesh Norn is also motivated by her personal ambitions and it's implied that she's using the Machine Orthodoxy to gain power. From the old flash site, she defenitely was attempting to get in Karn's good graces.
White is not above selfishness, it's just that it values above all morality. As Maro put it, the difference between Black and White villains is that the former are completly aware of the wrongness of what they're doing.
Also, Zeus is White/Red. God of order, morality and light + lightning, storms and being an impulsive prick.
You... do know that Chandra had an entire book told from her point of view, right?
Because that gave us a pretty healthy look into her psyche.
Really, you should ignore the flavor text, that's what causes problems with characterization.
After what she went through, running away is a perfectly natural and human reaction.
As a child her home plane was taken other by tyrants (I remember reading that they were phyrexians? but I'm not sure if that's true though.) and was only saved due to an ignited spark, on Bant, she found a place to call home. During the Conflux she watched her home become changed forever, and then watched as it was slowly overran by Grixis, and she just couldn't bare to watch another home be lost, so she fled... that reaction isn't weak... it's a very human reaction.
Hell despite all that she still fought to help save the Mirrans from the Phyrexians but... that was always going to be a losing battle, and the only reason she left was that Koth gave her no other choice and she would have died had she stayed and they both knew that.
On Theros she slayed a hydra (as well as the legendary one Polukranos when it fell from Nyx, I'm pretty sure it's mentioned she does, while the hydra the promotional materials show is red, so I guess she killed both.) and helped lead Akroan troops against the Minotaurs, and when the aftermath of that event caused Xenagos' ascension, she was blamed by Heliod, so she fled, because when a God with a known track record of holding a grudge is mad at you, it's best to make oneself scarce.
She did one run because she was weak, she ran because she was scared and I'm so tired of people calling her weak just because she fled, because scared doesn't make you weak, Elspeth lost her home twice, and then fought an a losing battle against monsters, and then she went to a world she thought would have no need to be a hero... on which she was called to be one, and was then blamed for someone else's actions.
Elspeth is not weak, she is human.
Apologies for the rant... I've had that on my chest for a long time now