Which is just weird, since The Lithomancer implies that Sorin and Nahiri have tried to kill the Eldrazi before Ugin came up with the sealing plan, and failed. I'm starting to suspect that Creatives plans for the Eldrazi changed sometime during the making of BfZ or OGW, without considering how it'd affect the greater narrative.
They had the power, they didn't had the methods.
People focus to much on Chandra burning them, but forgot how made that possible in the first place: Nissa.
Nissa control of the leylines (along with the knowledge given by Jace, that he got from Ugin) was what made possible to draw the REAL titan's body into Zendikar for them to be burned out.
The point is that neither Sorin or Nahiri could bring the titan's real bodies into physical form, so they could kill. It's not a matter of 'how much power', but a matter of 'knowing the right method'.
Now the point that makes sense on the reason that Bolas released the titan's was for them to be killed. Ugin already stated that the titan's death will have consequences. Maybe those consequences is what bolas is looking for (and Bolas himself couldn't kill them, because again, it's not a matter of 'how much power' but about methods)
That makes some more sense; thanks!
Now I just want to see what Bolas plot was (or some more Narset/Sarkhan; Tarkir = best Plane).
Am I the only one who found Liliana's "do-goody, do-gooder" comments too Joss Whedon-y for a Cosmic Horror Story?
I'll agree that it's cool that Emrakul is implied to be some kind of MtG answer to Galactus, but this ending didn't really feel satisfying for me; maybe it's because the build to it wasn't up to the task? Still, probably the best story about the Eldrazi thus far.
Can we please read about some local characters instead of the Neowalkers now? They seem a lot more interesting than the Plane-hopping wizards.
Not very much, but you could always start with the Planeswalker's Guide, and go from there.
Cliff Notes of New Phyrexia at the moment seems to be: Venser's dead, Karn's legged it, Koth is in hiding, Elspeth returned to Theros after Koth (seemingly) sacrificed his life, Tezzeret's legged it, and Elesh Norn is the dominant Phyrexian, with Jin-Gitaxias and Vorinclex as her subordinates, and Urabrask and Sheoldred... not a clue.
While I agree with you that Bolas is a terrible character and villain, he is canonically supposed to be this powerful scheming mastermind with plans within plans within plans within plans. They haven't done a very good job at showing us this. (Infact, they did a terrible job for reasons you already partly outlined.) In the end, we can't really dismiss him as not being powerful, because inlore he is acknowledged as such by other very powerful beings.
As for the Eldrazi being a threat to him: I never bought the explanation that the Eldrazi are a threat to the multiverse as a whole. Even if they would consume an entire plane each day, or three (considering there were three.) they'd still probably never be finished. The Eldrazi are a threat to individual planes, but not to all of them. As for Bolas' pet worlds falling prey to the Eldrazi: I don't think he'd care that much. And if matters come to worse, he surely would find a way to drive them off a world. We have already been shown, that it is possible to at least delay an Eldrazi titan entering a world (Avacyn) and to lure them elsewhere (Nahiri).
I think a large part of the problem where the Eldrazi are concerned is that they got stomped by the Gatewatch, when Ugin, Sorin and Nahiri could only seal them away. When they released Revelation at the Eye, I expected the story to end with the Gatewatch just barely driving off Ulamog, and then having to try and device some means of resealing it on another plane. But nope, Chandra kills Ulamog AND Kozilek, reducing the Cosmic Horror Eldritch Abominations to jobber status.
It's kind of hard to buy that Bolas would even need these things as a distraction for... whatever he's up to, when the greenhorn neowalkers manage to kill the Eldrazi where three extradimensional wizard-gods couldn't do it - or maybe Ugin, Sorin and Nahiri never even tried?
Exactly. They never tried. When Nahir (or Sorin?) asked if the titans couldn't be killed, Ugin says that it may not be possible* and at any rate would be unwise. Ugin wanted to seal the titans away, because he didn't know what kind of purpose they were serving for the multiverse. In this way, if they indeed proved to be irreplaceable, they could just re-release the Eldrazi, whereas the multiverse would be doomed, had they killed them.
Long story short, people really need to stop saying that the Zendikar Trio could not kill the titans. They simply never tried. (Of course, this doesn't mean the gatewatch should have been able to kill the Eldrazi as quickly and unceremeniously as they did, for narrative reasons, but at least it doesn't directly contradict established lore.)
*Since he used a "may", he never outright stated it was impossible.
This.
The way the titans were portrayed there should be no doubt that two oldwalkers would slaughter them. They just didn't try.
Which is just weird, since The Lithomancer implies that Sorin and Nahiri have tried to kill the Eldrazi before Ugin came up with the sealing plan, and failed. I'm starting to suspect that Creatives plans for the Eldrazi changed sometime during the making of BfZ or OGW, without considering how it'd affect the greater narrative.
Been a while since I read the book, but wasn't Bolas toying with Leshrac during that fight? To quote the wiki:
"Leshrac revealed his final card when he ambushed the party by the Madaran rift. Using the mask of Night's Reach, he stripped Jeska of Phage's dark consumption powers and used them to attack Nicol Bolas, who he hoped to defeat and steal his power to become the most powerful being in the Multiverse. After the elder dragon planeswalker returned, he planned to use Jeska to battle the dragon, but the Pardic planeswalker refused, apparently not under control as much as Leshrac thought. Leshrac and Bolas battled both by spells and claw, with Leshrac seemingly gaining the upper hand by paralyzing Bolas between the Talon Gates and temporarily negating his planeswalking powers at first and then began rotting his body off with Phage's powers.
Walking from world to world, Leshrac and Bolas fought and pieces of dragon body fell to each of them (Ravnica, Kamigawa, Mercadia, and Ulgrotha). When they reappeared on Dominaria, Leshrac prepared his final, killing spell.
However, nothing was as it seemed. Seconds before his coming demise, Bolas impaled Leshrac with the skeletal remains of his tail and revealed that he had defeated Night's Reach already and held her original, true mask, far superior to the one that Leshrac had. The dragon instantly regenerated himself and used the original Mask to capture Leshrac within it. Minutes after, Nicol Bolas used the mask imbued with Leshrac's power to close the Madaran rift, effectively ending the Walker of the Night's existence."
I do wonder why Bolas had the Eldrazi released, though. Other than to act as a distraction for Sorin and/or Nahiri, I can't see any reason to release them at all...
While I agree with you that Bolas is a terrible character and villain, he is canonically supposed to be this powerful scheming mastermind with plans within plans within plans within plans. They haven't done a very good job at showing us this. (Infact, they did a terrible job for reasons you already partly outlined.) In the end, we can't really dismiss him as not being powerful, because inlore he is acknowledged as such by other very powerful beings.
As for the Eldrazi being a threat to him: I never bought the explanation that the Eldrazi are a threat to the multiverse as a whole. Even if they would consume an entire plane each day, or three (considering there were three.) they'd still probably never be finished. The Eldrazi are a threat to individual planes, but not to all of them. As for Bolas' pet worlds falling prey to the Eldrazi: I don't think he'd care that much. And if matters come to worse, he surely would find a way to drive them off a world. We have already been shown, that it is possible to at least delay an Eldrazi titan entering a world (Avacyn) and to lure them elsewhere (Nahiri).
I think a large part of the problem where the Eldrazi are concerned is that they got stomped by the Gatewatch, when Ugin, Sorin and Nahiri could only seal them away. When they released Revelation at the Eye, I expected the story to end with the Gatewatch just barely driving off Ulamog, and then having to try and device some means of resealing it on another plane. But nope, Chandra kills Ulamog AND Kozilek, reducing the Cosmic Horror Eldritch Abominations to jobber status.
It's kind of hard to buy that Bolas would even need these things as a distraction for... whatever he's up to, when the greenhorn neowalkers manage to kill the Eldrazi where three extradimensional wizard-gods couldn't do it - or maybe Ugin, Sorin and Nahiri never even tried?
I don't see the difference between fighting with zombies and fighting with weird elementals. And why did the leylines try to kill Nissa?
The leylines tried to kill Nissa because of Emrakul: the Eldrazi's corruption has seeped into the very land itself. Same reason why Nissa didn't want to call up any Elementals; an Eldrazified Elemental would most likely not be of any help here.
Lorwyn/Shadowmoor is going to be difficult. There are no PW guides for the plane, and a return is quite unlikely, meaning no Art Book. Is there a guide or geographical reference somewhere that I can use as reference? I found a survival guide, but what else is there? If I can get a good enough idea of what it looks like, I'll ad it to the list. Note that I'm probably going to do Tarkir next.
I don't think there's really any kind of guide to what Lorwyn/Shadowmoor looks like, outside of what can be inferred from the cards and books. Although, I'm pretty sure a map of Lorwyn would look something like this:
Keep up the good work on the Innistrad ones, looking forward to see it finished.
Thanks! I appreciate the compliments. You won't have to wait much longer.
And it's done!!! Sorta.
I've uploaded version 5 of the map, which includes all the labels, added in with text. If you've been paying attention, you may have noticed I skipped right over version 4. Version 4 is the version with labels written in my crappy handwriting. I actually haven't added the labels to the physical map, because I wanted to scan it in first, so I didn't have to erase my handwriting off of it before I added text. Much less time consuming. I'll still upload version 4 soon, but since I'm now traveling, it won't be for a week or two.
Anyway, enough blather. Stop reading my rambling, and go check out the map in the OP! Please let me know if you find any errors or mistakes. Thanks.
Really nice work, too. Only thing I wish you'd do, is add the Coat of Arms of the various provinces next to their names, but that's just me. Still, beautiful work!
This was said a hundred times and it will be said a hundred times more if necessary: Sorin is not the reason that titans are freed! Nicol Bolas is! Even if he didn't seal her the outcome would still be the same!
Er, we have no evidence that Nahiri wouldn't have been able to do anything.
If you prevent firefighters from trying to put out a burning building you can't claim that only the arsonist is at fault by arguing "they might have failed anyway". Zendikar was left without a protector which definitely made it more vulnerable to Bolas' schemes.
Are you making a claim that Nahiri could do something to prevent Nicol Bolas, the most ancient and most powerful planeswalker (if not entity) of all time, from freeing the eldrazi titans?
She would have interferred with Sarkhan, Chandra and Jace when they were messing around in the Eye of Ugin. But could she have stopped Bolas if he showed up personally? We'll never know.
This story was too short and nothing really happened. The most interesting part for me was Nissa's comment about not liking the elemental she could summon. I would have liked to see that done just to see what would have appeared.
Sarkhan saving Ugin was necessary for fighting the Eldrazi... so we were led to believe, until Gatewatch took over.
In all fairness, without Ugin, Jace wouldn't have known the shape of the glyph required to pull the Eldrazi into physical space. So even if Ugin wasn't directly involved in killing the titans, he still needed to be revived, if Zendikar was to be saved.
Well... if nothing else, this chapter has convinced me that the "Jacetus League" monicker is more than appropriate, since it reads like one of the worse parts of a DC/Marvel Crisis Crossover.
What I'm really salty about is the fact that the art book summary had better pacing and a side story them seem to have cut out. I'm putting it in spoiler tags since it is from another source then the online fiction but it dose seem like they cut this out;
So the Gatewatch start at the Drownyard Temple and make their way to the city. Along the way they find a small town that has been mostly abounded as the eldrazi horror mutants followed Emrakul to Thraben, except for a few heavily mutated humans and animals left. As they leave Chandra ends up completely burning the town down because of how much of Emrakul has tainted it.
If they really cut that part out, it feels like a missed opportunity. But on the other flip of the dick, if it had been written with the same quality as this chapter, leaving it out might have been for the better.
Re: Lands having degraded under the Khans rule:
Have you taken a look at the basic land art for DTK? The Sultai palaces are in ruins. Not just overgrown, in literal ruins. The Mardu plains are plagued by rolling thunder clouds, the abzan deserts choked by sandstorms. The Jeskai mountain peaks are frozen over, the waterfalls lost. And the Temur tundra is charred by dragon fire and active volcanoes.
If you really want to use symbolism to explain how one timeline is better than the other, don't just focus on one timeline. Even if the basic land art is legitimately telling us that the plane suffered under the rule of the khans, it similarly shows us that the plane suffered under the rule of the dragons at least as much, if not even more.
The Ojutai aren't bad off, and life in that brood is better than life in most places in the multiverse
Except that non-dragons in Ojutai society have literally no rights? Off the top of my head I can think of a bunch of places in the multiverse where life is better than this.
Oh, I'm not arguing that KTK or DTK was better, I'm saying that the lands were the only evidence I saw that KTK was worse off than FRF.
But you're absolutely right, DTK hasn't been an improvement, and actually looks to be even worse, which, as was stated in the State of Design last year, left people feeling disappointed with how things were left.
So yeah, DTK seems to have screwed over the Clans, and Tarkir itself, completely. Although, I'd kind of like to see Narset convince Sarkhan that Tarkir is still broken, and they need to fix it by bringing the Dragons to heel, like they were under Ugin.
You missed the part where Phyrexians have invaded Tarkir though. *kidding*
But the artwork does paint a pretty bad picture. Only the Forest looks arguably fine in the Dragons world, the rest look really bad. Are there before and after pictures for the other lands or was this the only cycle? Kind of curious, I didn't pay attention to the basic lands as much. But it definitely looks like Tarkir has a lot to get fixed, kind of curious how they'll manage that.
This was the only cycle that spanned all three sets in the Tarkir block. There was also one cycle showing the Clan wedge color Lands during KTK and FRF:
And two comparing the KTK and DTK Clan color lands:
That makes some more sense; thanks!
Now I just want to see what Bolas plot was (or some more Narset/Sarkhan; Tarkir = best Plane).
I'll agree that it's cool that Emrakul is implied to be some kind of MtG answer to Galactus, but this ending didn't really feel satisfying for me; maybe it's because the build to it wasn't up to the task? Still, probably the best story about the Eldrazi thus far.
Can we please read about some local characters instead of the Neowalkers now? They seem a lot more interesting than the Plane-hopping wizards.
Cliff Notes of New Phyrexia at the moment seems to be: Venser's dead, Karn's legged it, Koth is in hiding, Elspeth returned to Theros after Koth (seemingly) sacrificed his life, Tezzeret's legged it, and Elesh Norn is the dominant Phyrexian, with Jin-Gitaxias and Vorinclex as her subordinates, and Urabrask and Sheoldred... not a clue.
Which is just weird, since The Lithomancer implies that Sorin and Nahiri have tried to kill the Eldrazi before Ugin came up with the sealing plan, and failed. I'm starting to suspect that Creatives plans for the Eldrazi changed sometime during the making of BfZ or OGW, without considering how it'd affect the greater narrative.
Been a while since I read the book, but wasn't Bolas toying with Leshrac during that fight? To quote the wiki:
"Leshrac revealed his final card when he ambushed the party by the Madaran rift. Using the mask of Night's Reach, he stripped Jeska of Phage's dark consumption powers and used them to attack Nicol Bolas, who he hoped to defeat and steal his power to become the most powerful being in the Multiverse. After the elder dragon planeswalker returned, he planned to use Jeska to battle the dragon, but the Pardic planeswalker refused, apparently not under control as much as Leshrac thought. Leshrac and Bolas battled both by spells and claw, with Leshrac seemingly gaining the upper hand by paralyzing Bolas between the Talon Gates and temporarily negating his planeswalking powers at first and then began rotting his body off with Phage's powers.
Walking from world to world, Leshrac and Bolas fought and pieces of dragon body fell to each of them (Ravnica, Kamigawa, Mercadia, and Ulgrotha). When they reappeared on Dominaria, Leshrac prepared his final, killing spell.
However, nothing was as it seemed. Seconds before his coming demise, Bolas impaled Leshrac with the skeletal remains of his tail and revealed that he had defeated Night's Reach already and held her original, true mask, far superior to the one that Leshrac had. The dragon instantly regenerated himself and used the original Mask to capture Leshrac within it. Minutes after, Nicol Bolas used the mask imbued with Leshrac's power to close the Madaran rift, effectively ending the Walker of the Night's existence."
I do wonder why Bolas had the Eldrazi released, though. Other than to act as a distraction for Sorin and/or Nahiri, I can't see any reason to release them at all...
I think a large part of the problem where the Eldrazi are concerned is that they got stomped by the Gatewatch, when Ugin, Sorin and Nahiri could only seal them away. When they released Revelation at the Eye, I expected the story to end with the Gatewatch just barely driving off Ulamog, and then having to try and device some means of resealing it on another plane. But nope, Chandra kills Ulamog AND Kozilek, reducing the Cosmic Horror Eldritch Abominations to jobber status.
It's kind of hard to buy that Bolas would even need these things as a distraction for... whatever he's up to, when the greenhorn neowalkers manage to kill the Eldrazi where three extradimensional wizard-gods couldn't do it - or maybe Ugin, Sorin and Nahiri never even tried?
The leylines tried to kill Nissa because of Emrakul: the Eldrazi's corruption has seeped into the very land itself. Same reason why Nissa didn't want to call up any Elementals; an Eldrazified Elemental would most likely not be of any help here.
I don't think there's really any kind of guide to what Lorwyn/Shadowmoor looks like, outside of what can be inferred from the cards and books. Although, I'm pretty sure a map of Lorwyn would look something like this:
Really nice work, too. Only thing I wish you'd do, is add the Coat of Arms of the various provinces next to their names, but that's just me. Still, beautiful work!
She would have interferred with Sarkhan, Chandra and Jace when they were messing around in the Eye of Ugin. But could she have stopped Bolas if he showed up personally? We'll never know.
Or an Essence of the Wild, if you want to go back to Innistrad before Emrakul brought down the property values for everyone.
Sarkhan, Narset and the Khans VS Bolas and the (enslaved) Dragonlords? Yes please.
If they really cut that part out, it feels like a missed opportunity. But on the other flip of the dick, if it had been written with the same quality as this chapter, leaving it out might have been for the better.
This was the only cycle that spanned all three sets in the Tarkir block. There was also one cycle showing the Clan wedge color Lands during KTK and FRF:
And two comparing the KTK and DTK Clan color lands:
And that took way more time than I had expected.