Emrakul doesn't even make sense. The weird things Tamiyo has been investigating have been going on longer than Emrakul would ever take to start consuming the plane. What would Emrakul even get out of causing infighting and such?
During the short stories last block, there were suggestions that the three titans have separate, synergistic roles. Ulamog eats the plane, Kozilek distorts it to some end, and Emrakul does something else. Having trouble sourcing that at the moment, but the point is that Emrakul isn't responsible for eating anything.
Emrakul distorts biological matter. States that in the art book. There's probably more, but there isn't anything about messing with people's heads. That's supposed to be Kozilek's territory.
Ugin was right.
Too bad people predicted Emrakul much earlier.
WotC had to predict people would guess Emrakul so if they hope it's a complete surprise they were kidding themselves. That said we may have a twist coming.
Emrakul is only obvious to those on MTG websites looking deep into the lore and analyzing all the tiny details. This is not the average player though. It's like in Game of Thrones/A Song of Fire and Ice where the R+L=J theory is painfully obvious to anyone looking for it, but not at all for the average show watcher/book reader.
Fair point, but anyone trying to decipher these clues/solve the mystery would also think of Emrakul. The people who would be completely surprised by these are the same people who would have missed the fact these clues are here in the first place.
I'm wondering if Emrakul is a red herring
I hope Emrakul is a red herring. It's too soon for her to show up, even if she isn't dealt with.
Ugin was right.
Too bad people predicted Emrakul much earlier.
WotC had to predict people would guess Emrakul so if they hope it's a complete surprise they were kidding themselves. That said we may have a twist coming.
Emrakul is only obvious to those on MTG websites looking deep into the lore and analyzing all the tiny details. This is not the average player though. It's like in Game of Thrones/A Song of Fire and Ice where the R+L=J theory is painfully obvious to anyone looking for it, but not at all for the average show watcher/book reader.
Fair point, but anyone trying to decipher these clues/solve the mystery would also think of Emrakul. The people who would be completely surprised by these are the same people who would have missed the fact these clues are here in the first place.
I'm wondering if Emrakul is a red herring
I hope Emrakul is a red herring. It's too soon for her to show up, even if she isn't dealt with.
Agreed. when Emrakul comes back, because we all know it will, I'd like to see two more Eldrazi Titans with it (They came as three, after all)
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Currently Playing:
Standard - Some kind of control
Modern - UB Mill (casual)
EDH - Meren's Grave Shenanigans
Ugin was right.
Too bad people predicted Emrakul much earlier.
WotC had to predict people would guess Emrakul so if they hope it's a complete surprise they were kidding themselves. That said we may have a twist coming.
Knowing them, the twist will be that it's Emrakul, and they didn't even consider that everyone would immediately think that in the wake of Zendikar.
But isn't it illogical for Emrakul to show up here now? The three titans were released on Zendikar at the same time. Nahiri's revenge on Sorin wouldn't have begun until then, and not immediately, since we didn't see evidence of her during Innistrad 1. It doesn't seem like enough time has passed for Emrakul to have shown up and driven Avacyn mad.
Also, doesn't this insidious madness theme not fit what we've seen of Emrakul before? It was always a huge looming presence and had no reason to be subtle or coy, and madness was Kozilek's thing.
All Eldrazi cause madness in some sense or capacity. It's kind of the hallmark of what they're based on after all, so it would be unfair if only one of them actually did it. Ulamog processes mind-warping diseases and infections, Kozilek warps physics and reality to cause insanity, and Emrakul corrupts your biology and inflicts feelings of despair and desolation (according to the artbook, the apparent reason she's the Aeons Torn is because she shatters our reality and makes us feel the weight and severity of or loneliness and unimportance). There's a lot of blank spots in the story connecting the threads we know about it, so it's hard to fill in the blanks and yeah, a lot of it doesn't make sense, but a lot of it didn't make sense prior to the 100% knowledge of Emrakul's apparent involvement, and it wouldn't have made sense with the information we only have now whether it had been Marit Lage, Ormendahl, or the Gitrog Monster, because we don't have the full picture.
We do know, though, that Emrakul escaped much, much sooner than the 2 titans in BFZ due to her greater strength, recovering faster and disappearing prior to the events of BFZ and apparently after the events of ROE. We also know that Avacyn goes mad after the events of Innistrad. I don't know if anyone is keeping track of time passed, but it's not a very long time anyway, so no matter whether it's Emrakul or not time is passing by relatively quickly.
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They didn't care that he was the savior of Fort Keff, the great hunter of Ondu, the champion of Kabira. To them, he was just another piece of flesh, a thing with life to be drained away.
I have said for a while:
Nahiri is mad at Sorin
Messing with Innistrad's mana to lure Emrakul or all of the Titans if she doesn't know about what happened.
Messing with the mana, messes up the Moon.
This has caused the Werewolves to start wolfing out again, and drove other mad.
People have been asking for months now for the black oath card. Well, if any of this is true we may have a black oath soon...
Yeah, just picture those zombies in the EM commercial against Emrakul's minions. Apocalypse!!!
I believe Nahiri is 100% summoning Emrakul, but the true reason behind everyone's madness and delirium might not be the Eldrazi alone. As if the ritual the Lithomancer is performing has attracted more than one entity.
Don't know how logistically Emrakul would fit in the set, given the Name and Number Crunch thread. Unless they place him at the end of the Artifacts and before Lands, which would go against placing Colorless cards at the beginning of the number set.
Don't know how logistically Emrakul would fit in the set, given the Name and Number Crunch thread. Unless they place him at the end of the Artifacts and before Lands, which would go against placing Colorless cards at the beginning of the number set.
Er... I think the obvious thing is that she wouldn't appear in this set, but rather the one named "Eldritch Moon". I think no matter what the big bad was, it wasn't going to appear in this set anyway. The set up has Nahiri, Avacyn, and the cultists as the apparent antagonists of the set, with the reveal of whatever is causing Innistrad's madness and what Nahiri wants to summon being revealed in the next. At least that was my interpretation of the set up.
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They didn't care that he was the savior of Fort Keff, the great hunter of Ondu, the champion of Kabira. To them, he was just another piece of flesh, a thing with life to be drained away.
Don't know how logistically Emrakul would fit in the set, given the Name and Number Crunch thread. Unless they place him at the end of the Artifacts and before Lands, which would go against placing Colorless cards at the beginning of the number set.
It wouldnt be this set, it would be in Eldritch Moon more than likely. If at all. Nothing confirmed yet
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The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginning-less time, darkness thrives in the void but always yields to purifying light.
I invision a future where one is not mighty when he can silence a crowd with brutality,
but when he leaves them speechless with wisdom.
Emrakul doesn't even make sense. The weird things Tamiyo has been investigating have been going on longer than Emrakul would ever take to start consuming the plane. What would Emrakul even get out of causing infighting and such?
Also, aren't the Eldrazi basically forces of nature? This seems a bit too...subtle for them.
Emrakul doesn't even make sense. The weird things Tamiyo has been investigating have been going on longer than Emrakul would ever take to start consuming the plane. What would Emrakul even get out of causing infighting and such?
Also, aren't the Eldrazi basically forces of nature? This seems a bit too...subtle for them.
Subtle like Kozilek hiding underground in Zendikar for more than half the BFZ story?
Emrakul doesn't even make sense. The weird things Tamiyo has been investigating have been going on longer than Emrakul would ever take to start consuming the plane. What would Emrakul even get out of causing infighting and such?
Also, aren't the Eldrazi basically forces of nature? This seems a bit too...subtle for them.
I don't know if people are taking this too literally or what, especially since the turn of phrase "force of nature" is such a vague descriptor that I can't imagine anything that's "hugely powerful" actually contradicting it, but I'm pretty sure Eldrazi are "forces of nature" in the sense that their existence both literally and figuratively warps the world and our sense of reality that we have no hope of fully understanding.
BFZ was just oen way to use eldritch monsters. It was told as an action story. And that makes sense. Zendikar is the action-adventure plane. But Innistrad is the horror plane, and that's home turf for eldritch abominations. The storytelling set up is different from BFZ and ROE so it's only natural that we'll see them in a different light on a plane with a totally different feel to it than Zendikar.
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They didn't care that he was the savior of Fort Keff, the great hunter of Ondu, the champion of Kabira. To them, he was just another piece of flesh, a thing with life to be drained away.
If it's Emrakul, I'll be pissed. If it's Marit Lage, I'll be even more pissed, because at least Emrakul makes some semblance of sense. But if this is all just an elaborate ruse to troll the Emrakul Truthers (I give R&D just enough credit to predict they would exist) I'll be very, very happy.
Emrakul doesn't even make sense. The weird things Tamiyo has been investigating have been going on longer than Emrakul would ever take to start consuming the plane. What would Emrakul even get out of causing infighting and such?
Also, aren't the Eldrazi basically forces of nature? This seems a bit too...subtle for them.
I don't know if people are taking this too literally or what, especially since the turn of phrase "force of nature" is such a vague descriptor that I can't imagine anything that's "hugely powerful" actually contradicting it, but I'm pretty sure Eldrazi are "forces of nature" in the sense that their existence both literally and figuratively warps the world and our sense of reality that we have no hope of fully understanding.
BFZ was just oen way to use eldritch monsters. It was told as an action story. And that makes sense. Zendikar is the action-adventure plane. But Innistrad is the horror plane, and that's home turf for eldritch abominations. The storytelling set up is different from BFZ and ROE so it's only natural that we'll see them in a different light on a plane with a totally different feel to it than Zendikar.
Well, have the eldrazi exhibit this level of cunning before? That was my main point.
"They came as three" does not necessarily guarantee that we should expect Emrakul, either.
Maybe its a new Eldrazi Titan being born because their 'needs' to be three Titans? Maybe one of the other two is just getting reincarnated on another plane? Or what if the Eldrazi appear differently on different planes, so it is the same entity as Emrakul but not in a form we are expecting/used to?
Maybe a Titan came to Innistrad a long long long LONG time ago and didn't munch-a-crunch the whole place, but was there long enough for people to consider it some terrible elder-God thing that is now returning.
There is a ton of speculation possible, but nothing set in stone (sorry, Nahiri).
That being said, the most obvious answer to this particular puzzle is that Nahiri is using cryptoliths to mess with leylines and some how attract an Eldrazi to Innistrad as vengeance for Sorin's apathy in helping Zendikar when she needed him (and whatever other wrongs she feels he has commited).
Could it be a red-herring/troll by wizards? Certainly. But I think this is becoming less and less likely as new arts and flavortexts emerge
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The true mind can weather all the lies and illusions without being lost. The true heart can tough the poison of hatred without being harmed. Since beginning-less time, darkness thrives in the void but always yields to purifying light.
I invision a future where one is not mighty when he can silence a crowd with brutality,
but when he leaves them speechless with wisdom.
Emrakul doesn't even make sense. The weird things Tamiyo has been investigating have been going on longer than Emrakul would ever take to start consuming the plane. What would Emrakul even get out of causing infighting and such?
Also, aren't the Eldrazi basically forces of nature? This seems a bit too...subtle for them.
I don't know if people are taking this too literally or what, especially since the turn of phrase "force of nature" is such a vague descriptor that I can't imagine anything that's "hugely powerful" actually contradicting it, but I'm pretty sure Eldrazi are "forces of nature" in the sense that their existence both literally and figuratively warps the world and our sense of reality that we have no hope of fully understanding.
BFZ was just oen way to use eldritch monsters. It was told as an action story. And that makes sense. Zendikar is the action-adventure plane. But Innistrad is the horror plane, and that's home turf for eldritch abominations. The storytelling set up is different from BFZ and ROE so it's only natural that we'll see them in a different light on a plane with a totally different feel to it than Zendikar.
Well, have the eldrazi exhibit this level of cunning before? That was my main point.
I mean, what makes something "this level" of cunning? Is this any more or less cunning than Kozilek feeding underground during BFZ in order to conceal himself? Do we know what's going on as of SOI is an act of "cunning" by Emrakul in the first place? Is Emrakul being actively malevolent, or is Nahiri calling her there, and just being in the vicinity corrupting our bodies and minds?
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They didn't care that he was the savior of Fort Keff, the great hunter of Ondu, the champion of Kabira. To them, he was just another piece of flesh, a thing with life to be drained away.
JDA: I think people are arguing that Emrakul is consciously causing the madness, and there is some support that the madness has conscious direction.
What Avacyn 'hears' and is spreading through the Angels has terrible purpose, as one example.
However, I would think that this is Nahiri siphoning 'Emrakul energy' for lack of a better term than a conscious will of Emrakul.
Of course, if Avacyn is directly 'hearing' the voice of Emrakul, then what everyone thinks of the Eldrazi is wrong. We know that the Eldrazi are drawn to mana and that Ulamog, at least, 'eats' it. Perhaps the Angels, as manifestations of mana, can 'hear' Emrakul in a way that no non-mana manifestation can?
If we stop to think for a moment, how much of what we are seeing is insanity vs. anger? (Madness works well for both.) The angels are quite clearly losing their sanity. The vampires, OTOH, don't seem to be going insane instead of just very angry at Nahiri's assault. The werewolves are reverting, but do we have any further evidence of insanity?
JDA: I think people are arguing that Emrakul is consciously causing the madness, and there is some support that the madness has conscious direction.
What Avacyn 'hears' and is spreading through the Angels has terrible purpose, as one example.
However, I would think that this is Nahiri siphoning 'Emrakul energy' for lack of a better term than a conscious will of Emrakul.
Of course, if Avacyn is directly 'hearing' the voice of Emrakul, then what everyone thinks of the Eldrazi is wrong. We know that the Eldrazi are drawn to mana and that Ulamog, at least, 'eats' it. Perhaps the Angels, as manifestations of mana, can 'hear' Emrakul in a way that no non-mana manifestation can?
If we stop to think for a moment, how much of what we are seeing is insanity vs. anger? (Madness works well for both.) The angels are quite clearly losing their sanity. The vampires, OTOH, don't seem to be going insane instead of just very angry at Nahiri's assault. The werewolves are reverting, but do we have any further evidence of insanity?
We simply don't really know at this point. I like the idea that Nahiri is the one putting these thoughts into Avacyn's mind. But the thing is, we don't know enough about the story to say Emrakul makes no sense here. Nobody makes perfect sense here with the information we have is really all I want to say. We know the titans at least can be deliberate, so if that's all that's a concern, then it isn't really one.
I mentioned this in another thread, but Emrakul's trait of warping biology is a new one as of BFZ. She did generically Eldrazi tihngs before as all the titans did, but she still does that stuff alongside her newly elaborated on power of currption. Why would she get that power though? It has nothing to d owith her other ones flavorfully. It's like, "she makes us feel despair and loneliness in the world, messes with gravity to pull things into herself... and also she makes people into her drones now". If she was going to be featured in a return to Innistrad, that's a rather useful trait for us to learn about her to tie her mechanically to Innistrad, if that ends up beign the case.
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They didn't care that he was the savior of Fort Keff, the great hunter of Ondu, the champion of Kabira. To them, he was just another piece of flesh, a thing with life to be drained away.
When you take the journal number the first digit is the clue token with that many number of words in the flavour text the second number is which word it is and the last number is where it fits in the final sentence. When you do this for each language you get Remember this they came as, (The last word is never explictly said as three. However three is a word on the clue token that is never used and the flavour text for Ugin's insight is Remember This: they came as three.
How *****in' a twist would it be if it turns out to be corrupted into 'remember this, they came as four' and it turns out Marit Lage is a fourth Eldrazi Titan
You don't call "dying to removal" if the removal is more expensive in resources than the creature. If you have to spend BG (Abrupt Decay), or W + basic land (PtE) to remove a 1G, that is not "dying to removal". Strictly speaking Goyf dies to removal, but actually your removal is dying to Goyf.
Emrakul distorts biological matter. States that in the art book. There's probably more, but there isn't anything about messing with people's heads. That's supposed to be Kozilek's territory.
I hope Emrakul is a red herring. It's too soon for her to show up, even if she isn't dealt with.
Agreed. when Emrakul comes back, because we all know it will, I'd like to see two more Eldrazi Titans with it (They came as three, after all)
Standard - Some kind of control
Modern - UB Mill (casual)
EDH - Meren's Grave Shenanigans
All Eldrazi cause madness in some sense or capacity. It's kind of the hallmark of what they're based on after all, so it would be unfair if only one of them actually did it. Ulamog processes mind-warping diseases and infections, Kozilek warps physics and reality to cause insanity, and Emrakul corrupts your biology and inflicts feelings of despair and desolation (according to the artbook, the apparent reason she's the Aeons Torn is because she shatters our reality and makes us feel the weight and severity of or loneliness and unimportance). There's a lot of blank spots in the story connecting the threads we know about it, so it's hard to fill in the blanks and yeah, a lot of it doesn't make sense, but a lot of it didn't make sense prior to the 100% knowledge of Emrakul's apparent involvement, and it wouldn't have made sense with the information we only have now whether it had been Marit Lage, Ormendahl, or the Gitrog Monster, because we don't have the full picture.
We do know, though, that Emrakul escaped much, much sooner than the 2 titans in BFZ due to her greater strength, recovering faster and disappearing prior to the events of BFZ and apparently after the events of ROE. We also know that Avacyn goes mad after the events of Innistrad. I don't know if anyone is keeping track of time passed, but it's not a very long time anyway, so no matter whether it's Emrakul or not time is passing by relatively quickly.
But the people behind the barrier knew.
Look to the bloodlust deepest scar
Look to the scattering Brythonic uprising
For this be the wall of Johnny Guitar
Nahiri is mad at Sorin
Messing with Innistrad's mana to lure Emrakul or all of the Titans if she doesn't know about what happened.
Messing with the mana, messes up the Moon.
This has caused the Werewolves to start wolfing out again, and drove other mad.
And we know exactly which Black PW will take it: Ob Nixilis of the Black Oath
I believe Nahiri is 100% summoning Emrakul, but the true reason behind everyone's madness and delirium might not be the Eldrazi alone. As if the ritual the Lithomancer is performing has attracted more than one entity.
UR ....... WUBR ........... WB ............. RGW ........ UBR ....... WUB .... BGU
Spells / Blink & Combo / Token Grind / Dino Tribal / Draw Cards / Zombies / Reanimate
Er... I think the obvious thing is that she wouldn't appear in this set, but rather the one named "Eldritch Moon". I think no matter what the big bad was, it wasn't going to appear in this set anyway. The set up has Nahiri, Avacyn, and the cultists as the apparent antagonists of the set, with the reveal of whatever is causing Innistrad's madness and what Nahiri wants to summon being revealed in the next. At least that was my interpretation of the set up.
But the people behind the barrier knew.
I invision a future where one is not mighty when he can silence a crowd with brutality,
but when he leaves them speechless with wisdom.
Also, aren't the Eldrazi basically forces of nature? This seems a bit too...subtle for them.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
like some demonic imposer or something like that?
|| 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 ||
I don't know if people are taking this too literally or what, especially since the turn of phrase "force of nature" is such a vague descriptor that I can't imagine anything that's "hugely powerful" actually contradicting it, but I'm pretty sure Eldrazi are "forces of nature" in the sense that their existence both literally and figuratively warps the world and our sense of reality that we have no hope of fully understanding.
BFZ was just oen way to use eldritch monsters. It was told as an action story. And that makes sense. Zendikar is the action-adventure plane. But Innistrad is the horror plane, and that's home turf for eldritch abominations. The storytelling set up is different from BFZ and ROE so it's only natural that we'll see them in a different light on a plane with a totally different feel to it than Zendikar.
But the people behind the barrier knew.
Well, have the eldrazi exhibit this level of cunning before? That was my main point.
375 unpowered cube - https://cubecobra.com/cube/list/601ac624832cdf1039947588
Maybe its a new Eldrazi Titan being born because their 'needs' to be three Titans? Maybe one of the other two is just getting reincarnated on another plane? Or what if the Eldrazi appear differently on different planes, so it is the same entity as Emrakul but not in a form we are expecting/used to?
Maybe a Titan came to Innistrad a long long long LONG time ago and didn't munch-a-crunch the whole place, but was there long enough for people to consider it some terrible elder-God thing that is now returning.
There is a ton of speculation possible, but nothing set in stone (sorry, Nahiri).
That being said, the most obvious answer to this particular puzzle is that Nahiri is using cryptoliths to mess with leylines and some how attract an Eldrazi to Innistrad as vengeance for Sorin's apathy in helping Zendikar when she needed him (and whatever other wrongs she feels he has commited).
Could it be a red-herring/troll by wizards? Certainly. But I think this is becoming less and less likely as new arts and flavortexts emerge
I invision a future where one is not mighty when he can silence a crowd with brutality,
but when he leaves them speechless with wisdom.
I mean, what makes something "this level" of cunning? Is this any more or less cunning than Kozilek feeding underground during BFZ in order to conceal himself? Do we know what's going on as of SOI is an act of "cunning" by Emrakul in the first place? Is Emrakul being actively malevolent, or is Nahiri calling her there, and just being in the vicinity corrupting our bodies and minds?
But the people behind the barrier knew.
What Avacyn 'hears' and is spreading through the Angels has terrible purpose, as one example.
However, I would think that this is Nahiri siphoning 'Emrakul energy' for lack of a better term than a conscious will of Emrakul.
Of course, if Avacyn is directly 'hearing' the voice of Emrakul, then what everyone thinks of the Eldrazi is wrong. We know that the Eldrazi are drawn to mana and that Ulamog, at least, 'eats' it. Perhaps the Angels, as manifestations of mana, can 'hear' Emrakul in a way that no non-mana manifestation can?
If we stop to think for a moment, how much of what we are seeing is insanity vs. anger? (Madness works well for both.) The angels are quite clearly losing their sanity. The vampires, OTOH, don't seem to be going insane instead of just very angry at Nahiri's assault. The werewolves are reverting, but do we have any further evidence of insanity?
We simply don't really know at this point. I like the idea that Nahiri is the one putting these thoughts into Avacyn's mind. But the thing is, we don't know enough about the story to say Emrakul makes no sense here. Nobody makes perfect sense here with the information we have is really all I want to say. We know the titans at least can be deliberate, so if that's all that's a concern, then it isn't really one.
I mentioned this in another thread, but Emrakul's trait of warping biology is a new one as of BFZ. She did generically Eldrazi tihngs before as all the titans did, but she still does that stuff alongside her newly elaborated on power of currption. Why would she get that power though? It has nothing to d owith her other ones flavorfully. It's like, "she makes us feel despair and loneliness in the world, messes with gravity to pull things into herself... and also she makes people into her drones now". If she was going to be featured in a return to Innistrad, that's a rather useful trait for us to learn about her to tie her mechanically to Innistrad, if that ends up beign the case.
But the people behind the barrier knew.
How *****in' a twist would it be if it turns out to be corrupted into 'remember this, they came as four' and it turns out Marit Lage is a fourth Eldrazi Titan
"OH GOD MY BRAIN IS EXPLOADING AT HOW BAD THE ART IS ON MY OWN CARD"
-A friend's first impression of Ancestral Recall
10/10, I tapped.
BFM, not Emrakul!
Low-power cube enthusiast!
My 1570 card cube (no longer updated)
My 415 Peasant+ Artifact and Enchantment Cube
Ever-Expanding "Just throw it in" cube.