I like the character interactions here and Grant is doing a good job at giving them a lot of layers with each other and the story;
- There is some tension between Kaito and Wanderer with her likely unintentionally ignoring him some now she's home.
-The guilt the two share over Tamiyo, (with Wanderer even acknowledging that if they had waited Tamiyo might have also been cured) and as result not noticing Nashi vanishing right off.
-The different feelings on the desparking and opening of the omenpaths. Zimone loving being able to finally travel the planes, Kaito feeling guilt over not knowing why he still is sparked, Wanderer happy, Tyvar not really caring and Niko being bitter. Per the authors "dvd extrams" a lot of Niko's issues is also they where on Kaldheim during the invasion and wanted to go back to Theros to check on it after the war when they found out they where desparked. Very different from vast majorty of the walkers who where on home and many desparked there.
-Zimone being both into Tyvar while so clashing sum as the "nerd" vs the "jock" of this horror story. Also very GU for Zimone to likely being lured into a trap with books. Also like how its vauge enough we don't know if that was her when Tyvar came back.
-Niko not liking Aminatou as they want to defy fate while Aminatou is basically fate personified.
-I do like that Aminatou seemed to have matured a bit since her desparking.
Other thoughts;
-I hope we get more flashbacks on Marina and see more of the plane before hand. Like neat that the plane had two suns and I like idea that demon summoning/contracts lead to the tech boon as well a parallel to 80's consumerism that seems to have had a hand in dooming the plane. Also elves are native.
-From art from the trailer it does seem the story scroll holding Tamiyo is in Duskmourn (unless thats a false sense of safety art). Also likely the rat folk who went with Nashi will be the main kill counters.
-Marina is def the trope of the teen daughter in many haunted house stories, but def thinking of Lydia from Beetlejuice. On that note, the token Aminatou gives them are very much like the totem in Until Dawn.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Part of me is betting that all of Aminatou's tokens will get burned up and someone in the main party will die (nonzero chance that it's ironically Winter).
turns out there could have been a "Invasion of Duskmourn" card in March of the Machines. basically the realmbreaker/Elesh norn couldn't get it to duskmourn the house it kept them out so it can still have it's food (the victims)
basically Valgaroth/the house would not allow the phyrexians to take away their victims
hehehe the most evil house in the multiverse/Valgaroth did what Obo one third of Trostani tried to do on ravnica without breaking a sweat
The extras seem to imply that City got converted to the Cult midway through his exploits and, for obvious reasons, didn't try converting people too hard unless he had to. Good, I was worried that he literally got replaced with a Cultist during his exploits.
-Not to dogpile but Flisch you got your answer about food clearly and it plays out similar to my thought; the house provides food to survivor to keep them alive long enough to feed on them. Basically the survivors are treated like livestock or game reserve prey so that the house can keep victims going.
-First plane to feature the phyrexian war (as Thunder Junction and Bloomburrow seemed to have been missed (or for TJ Phyrexia didn't do much as it was an empty plane), not sure if I got the house kept Phyrexians out like Ryperior74 or if the war just happened in a part of the house isolated from Dawns home.
-Per the guide Duskmourn always manifest cross planar doorways but now with the omenpaths open the house can hunt more freely as it can now just lure in omenpathers to keep its food supple high.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
suprising....jace is here with kaito.....but im not buying it yet it could be monster/spirit/nightmare to look like jace. (Infact Jace mentions fighting and he never does that)
Instinctively, they reached for the warmth of their spark—not to flee, not to leave their allies behind, but to cup it in the hollow of their will, to feel its reassurance and know that their fate was not yet sealed. And, as had always been the case since the invasion, they found nothing where that tiny flicker of the Blind Eternities should have been, only void, a vessel too broken to contain anything but dust.
We’re in the Dragonstorm arc, we had to have a dragon. It was necessary.
This dragon might not be legendary, and it probably isn't from a dragonstorm, but this probably means we do get a card with a dragon in the art in the Duskmourn set...right?
It's good to see the side stories being better in quality than the main stories. It's really jarring how the dialog in the main stories just doesn't work at times.
Nike talks about having shapeshifting labyrinths at home and then five minutes later suggests they always stick to the right hand, because this way they will *checks notes* "never be lost". Mmh.
As savage as Zimone's "Elven Princes don't think" quip was, I don't think she was the right character to say this.
And as always there's a character who has read the script: This time it's the Wanderer: "Ah Kaito's fine, he just fell into a literal giant lamprey mouth." ??? I genuinely thought the whole scene was a setup to set the stakes and show us what those fateshifters do. But who needs fateshifters when you have plot armor.
And the "Oh I can feel exactly how this plane works metaphysically in me bones." doesn't sit right with me either. Sure it's a world with magic, but if everything is solved through magic then just every successive problem gets cheaper. I mean, you already have Zimone reading books about the origins of the house. Why can't she be the one who figures it out through mundane means (if they even have to, it doesn't appear to be helping their mission) instead of the Wanderer just knowing because she is more connected to the blind eternities or whatever.
And what's the Wanderer's deal with literally threatening Winter at blade-point for being *checks notes* snarky. Holy *****, you come to a hostile plane, get narrowly rescued by a native who is risking his own life for you (as far as we know, nothing on Duskmourn is as it seems after all) and then you threaten to end him because you don't like his tone. You're not the emperor on this plane, honey. And, honestly, given this attitude you shouldn't be on Kamigawa either, apparently.
And to be clear, I'm not blaming the author. Considering how consistently low quality the main stories are compared to the side stories, it really feels like a systemic issue, like being forced to cram too much into the main story or being forced to present characters in this and that way. Whenever the authors are given more freedom (as I suspect the side stories are made) it shows just how well they can craft them, as evidenced by the DvD extras of the Children of the Carnival, with proper setups, foreshadowing, payoffs, yadda yadda.
-Not to dogpile but Flisch you got your answer about food clearly and it plays out similar to my thought; the house provides food to survivor to keep them alive long enough to feed on them. Basically the survivors are treated like livestock or game reserve prey so that the house can keep victims going.
I read it, but I'm still not convinced that's great worldbuilding. It's like patching up holes with more patchwork until you have a mess that somehow works but falls apart if you look too closely.
Maybe it's a preference thing but I personally am not a big fan of fictional fantastic worlds that need to constantly introduce new things to keep them working. Good worldbuilding of worlds that don't follow our metaphysics have one gimmick and then explore what it means.
But there's also a thematic disconnect that I realized with the side stories: Duskmourn is supposed to be based on modern horror, but modern horror is pretty much defined by ordinary people, living ordinary lives and having ordinary hopes and dreams, suddenly being thrown into horrifying, decidedly non-ordinary scenarios. Your average protagonist in modern horror isn't a battle hardened veteran or grizzled survivors. Those are side characters at best (who usually die quickly after they have fulfilled their exposition duties). But Duskmourn is literally populated with those. I think they should have gone the Thunderjunction route and made literally everyone on the plane a non-native.
But maybe such a theme was always destined to fail, because 99% of the people in the multiverse don't live modern/ordinary lives, at least not from our perspective.
I will say though, I like the aspect of the house suddenly being all "wow, I don't need to keep you guys alone anymore *puts on napkin*". Still believe it could have been integrated into better worldbuilding.
The extras seem to imply that City got converted to the Cult midway through his exploits and, for obvious reasons, didn't try converting people too hard unless he had to. Good, I was worried that he literally got replaced with a Cultist during his exploits.
Mmh, I read it as he was only recently converted due to the line "Did his eyes shine a brighter blue today than usual?" but I could also see that him being a very successful gatherer is a hint.
turns out there could have been a "Invasion of Duskmourn" card in March of the Machines. basically the realmbreaker/Elesh norn couldn't get it to duskmourn the house it kept them out so it can still have it's food (the victims)
basically Valgaroth/the house would not allow the phyrexians to take away their victims
hehehe the most evil house in the multiverse/Valgaroth did what Obo one third of Trostani tried to do on ravnica without breaking a sweat
I dunno, the way I interpreted it (and the extras appear to imply so as well) the invasion did happen, but Duskmourn probably wasn't a priority. I assume they sent out only a scouting force, because they had literally no intel on the plane and when they found that there wasn't much to gain (only a few survivors and the most powerful entity on the plane is trapped there and cannot leave) and that the entire plane was fighting back, they chalked it up as a low-return-of-investment deal and focused on the rest of the multiverse first.
The shaking does imply that realmbreaker reached the plane, after all.
Little update from the “where you can find previews article”
the author seaman Mcguigre herself has a preview card on debut day so that sounds like a epilogue is coming and her preview card might be in line with Loot, the Key to Everything in Thunder junction or Tamiyo's Compleation in kamigawa neon dynasty
“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Some things in today's story (and the implication that story time got extended because the story writers wrote more than expected):
All 3 Fateshifters are used (I bet someone dies before everyone gets out, and it ain't Nashi, Winter, the Wanderer, Kaito, or Tyvar)
Nashi is rescued from his Wicker captors, but nobody's out of the House yet
Nashi probably dropped his Tamiyo scroll in the House, and that's why he still wants to search it
Despite sounding like a native and being named like the natives, Winter actually isn't from the House (maybe he is from Ravnica, given that many-language sign he has?)
Jace is trying to rescue Vraska and Loot from the House, and it does indeed look like Vraska and Loot are sighted
Kaito planeswalks out of the House (or at least attempts to) at the end of the episode
Zimone and Tyvar see a false ghost of Dean Kianne despite Kianne being Compleated
Tyvar tries incorporating the House into his and Zimone's skin to escape being ravaged by the House's residents, but Zimone and Tyvar start thinking like the House before Zimone manages to get Tyvar to end the incorporation and snap out of it
Despite sounding like a native and being named like the natives, Winter actually isn't from the House (maybe he is from Ravnica, given that many-language sign he has?)
This is genuinely confusing. His name scheme follows that of the natives on Duskmourn, so why? It's not even a good twist because him not being a native is not particularly important.
Tyvar tries incorporating the House into his and Zimone's skin to escape being ravaged by the House's residents, but Zimone and Tyvar start thinking like the House before Zimone manages to get Tyvar to end the incorporation and snap out of it
Correction: They did die and Zimone's fateshifter was activated.
(Also as I understand it, every one of them got a fateshifter, plus a spare one for Nashi, so Niko, Nashi and Kaito should still have theirs.)
Curious about why Zendikar's door was closed. Did the house come in contact with the eldrazi a while back and was like "Nope!" not knowing that the eldrazi are no longer (on Zendikar)?
Yeah I think Winter is lying and is a native. I think he will end up betraying the group by leaving them and escaping through a door out himself.
The Zendikar door I think is a nod to how Nahiri has said she's cutting Zendikar off from the rest of the multiverse.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
-We do seem to be building to an "in-character" theory/reason for the Spark Rupture; Aftermath stories talk on being caused by the sylex blast and/or the invasion tree, Ixalan 2 has Saheeli guess their sparks didn't just vanish and just went somewhere else and now Zimone talking how seemly sparks where a way for the Blind Eternities to be able to interact with the multiverse and now the omenpaths are filling that slot. While being drip fed and more character in story theorizing, might be important info for the future with Jace/Vraska/Loot. Also interesting that Zimone implies that even less planeswalkers seem to be sparking as well so it seems maybe inactive sparks vanished.* **
-Phyrexia: Yeah I think Phyrexia did invade. I do think its likely the house could present itself as low priority as Flisch guessed at but I could also see the Phyrexian struggle with the houses physics bending as they had similar issues with Xerex as well as likely the house letting the monsters have a free for all over the phyrexians.
-The nightmare having smokey magic and Jaces reaction might just be multiverse nightmares/nightmare magics just having those traits but I do wonder still if Ashiok was a native of Duskmourn (as mtg version of Freddy Krueger).
* Like I do know the real world reason is they are cutting back on planeswalker cards and they decided to focus more on pre-established planeswalker characters then making new character for the foreseeable future but still interesting to not that less new planeswalkers seem to be appearing in universe.
** The story lead talked on many of the planeswalkers where faces/mascot for certain planes and could still be that as legendary creatures (citing Will and Rowan for Eldraine) so likely characters like Annie, Proft and Mabel would have been planeswalkers under old marketing so know my head canon now is they had dorment sparks that got ruptured as well.
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“There are no weak Jews. I am descended from those who wrestle angels and kill giants. We were chosen by God. You were chosen by a pathetic little man who can't seem to grow a full mustache"
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
The extras has the author state that the young beasties "spin cocoons around themselves" and then emerge as adults. While the card art in the story may be misleading and may actually be for something unrelated, I got the distinct impression from the card art and story combined that beasties are actually made from human (and other?) skeletons instead, processed by ravenous cocoons until they emerge as beasties.
Spindlewight was made for this story, likely too late for the card developers to make a card for him.
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- There is some tension between Kaito and Wanderer with her likely unintentionally ignoring him some now she's home.
-The guilt the two share over Tamiyo, (with Wanderer even acknowledging that if they had waited Tamiyo might have also been cured) and as result not noticing Nashi vanishing right off.
-The different feelings on the desparking and opening of the omenpaths. Zimone loving being able to finally travel the planes, Kaito feeling guilt over not knowing why he still is sparked, Wanderer happy, Tyvar not really caring and Niko being bitter. Per the authors "dvd extrams" a lot of Niko's issues is also they where on Kaldheim during the invasion and wanted to go back to Theros to check on it after the war when they found out they where desparked. Very different from vast majorty of the walkers who where on home and many desparked there.
-Zimone being both into Tyvar while so clashing sum as the "nerd" vs the "jock" of this horror story. Also very GU for Zimone to likely being lured into a trap with books. Also like how its vauge enough we don't know if that was her when Tyvar came back.
-Niko not liking Aminatou as they want to defy fate while Aminatou is basically fate personified.
-I do like that Aminatou seemed to have matured a bit since her desparking.
Other thoughts;
-I hope we get more flashbacks on Marina and see more of the plane before hand. Like neat that the plane had two suns and I like idea that demon summoning/contracts lead to the tech boon as well a parallel to 80's consumerism that seems to have had a hand in dooming the plane. Also elves are native.
-From art from the trailer it does seem the story scroll holding Tamiyo is in Duskmourn (unless thats a false sense of safety art). Also likely the rat folk who went with Nashi will be the main kill counters.
-Marina is def the trope of the teen daughter in many haunted house stories, but def thinking of Lydia from Beetlejuice. On that note, the token Aminatou gives them are very much like the totem in Until Dawn.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
Duskmourn: house of horrors | Children of the Carnival Part 1
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/side-two-children-of-the-carnival-part-1
interesting note
basically Valgaroth/the house would not allow the phyrexians to take away their victims
hehehe the most evil house in the multiverse/Valgaroth did what Obo one third of Trostani tried to do on ravnica without breaking a sweat
-First plane to feature the phyrexian war (as Thunder Junction and Bloomburrow seemed to have been missed (or for TJ Phyrexia didn't do much as it was an empty plane), not sure if I got the house kept Phyrexians out like Ryperior74 or if the war just happened in a part of the house isolated from Dawns home.
-Per the guide Duskmourn always manifest cross planar doorways but now with the omenpaths open the house can hunt more freely as it can now just lure in omenpathers to keep its food supple high.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/episode-three-dont-look-back
suprising....jace is here with kaito.....but im not buying it yet it could be monster/spirit/nightmare to look like jace. (Infact Jace mentions fighting and he never does that)
oh and the wanderer gets a glimmer..her glimmer resembles Kyodai, Soul of Kamigawa honestly surprised its not Yoshimaru, Ever Faithful
Damn does this hurt
https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2024/08/22/dont-look-back-the-dvd-extras/
This dragon might not be legendary, and it probably isn't from a dragonstorm, but this probably means we do get a card with a dragon in the art in the Duskmourn set...right?
Nike talks about having shapeshifting labyrinths at home and then five minutes later suggests they always stick to the right hand, because this way they will *checks notes* "never be lost". Mmh.
As savage as Zimone's "Elven Princes don't think" quip was, I don't think she was the right character to say this.
And as always there's a character who has read the script: This time it's the Wanderer: "Ah Kaito's fine, he just fell into a literal giant lamprey mouth." ??? I genuinely thought the whole scene was a setup to set the stakes and show us what those fateshifters do. But who needs fateshifters when you have plot armor.
And the "Oh I can feel exactly how this plane works metaphysically in me bones." doesn't sit right with me either. Sure it's a world with magic, but if everything is solved through magic then just every successive problem gets cheaper. I mean, you already have Zimone reading books about the origins of the house. Why can't she be the one who figures it out through mundane means (if they even have to, it doesn't appear to be helping their mission) instead of the Wanderer just knowing because she is more connected to the blind eternities or whatever.
And what's the Wanderer's deal with literally threatening Winter at blade-point for being *checks notes* snarky. Holy *****, you come to a hostile plane, get narrowly rescued by a native who is risking his own life for you (as far as we know, nothing on Duskmourn is as it seems after all) and then you threaten to end him because you don't like his tone. You're not the emperor on this plane, honey. And, honestly, given this attitude you shouldn't be on Kamigawa either, apparently.
And to be clear, I'm not blaming the author. Considering how consistently low quality the main stories are compared to the side stories, it really feels like a systemic issue, like being forced to cram too much into the main story or being forced to present characters in this and that way. Whenever the authors are given more freedom (as I suspect the side stories are made) it shows just how well they can craft them, as evidenced by the DvD extras of the Children of the Carnival, with proper setups, foreshadowing, payoffs, yadda yadda.
I read it, but I'm still not convinced that's great worldbuilding. It's like patching up holes with more patchwork until you have a mess that somehow works but falls apart if you look too closely.
Maybe it's a preference thing but I personally am not a big fan of fictional fantastic worlds that need to constantly introduce new things to keep them working. Good worldbuilding of worlds that don't follow our metaphysics have one gimmick and then explore what it means.
But there's also a thematic disconnect that I realized with the side stories: Duskmourn is supposed to be based on modern horror, but modern horror is pretty much defined by ordinary people, living ordinary lives and having ordinary hopes and dreams, suddenly being thrown into horrifying, decidedly non-ordinary scenarios. Your average protagonist in modern horror isn't a battle hardened veteran or grizzled survivors. Those are side characters at best (who usually die quickly after they have fulfilled their exposition duties). But Duskmourn is literally populated with those. I think they should have gone the Thunderjunction route and made literally everyone on the plane a non-native.
But maybe such a theme was always destined to fail, because 99% of the people in the multiverse don't live modern/ordinary lives, at least not from our perspective.
I will say though, I like the aspect of the house suddenly being all "wow, I don't need to keep you guys alone anymore *puts on napkin*". Still believe it could have been integrated into better worldbuilding.
Mmh, I read it as he was only recently converted due to the line "Did his eyes shine a brighter blue today than usual?" but I could also see that him being a very successful gatherer is a hint.
I dunno, the way I interpreted it (and the extras appear to imply so as well) the invasion did happen, but Duskmourn probably wasn't a priority. I assume they sent out only a scouting force, because they had literally no intel on the plane and when they found that there wasn't much to gain (only a few survivors and the most powerful entity on the plane is trapped there and cannot leave) and that the entire plane was fighting back, they chalked it up as a low-return-of-investment deal and focused on the rest of the multiverse first.
The shaking does imply that realmbreaker reached the plane, after all.
the author seaman Mcguigre herself has a preview card on debut day so that sounds like a epilogue is coming and her preview card might be in line with Loot, the Key to Everything in Thunder junction or Tamiyo's Compleation in kamigawa neon dynasty
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/episode-four-dont-give-up
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
In case people forgot Tyvar was black aligned.
This is genuinely confusing. His name scheme follows that of the natives on Duskmourn, so why? It's not even a good twist because him not being a native is not particularly important.
Could he be lying to gain sympathy?
Correction: They did die and Zimone's fateshifter was activated.
(Also as I understand it, every one of them got a fateshifter, plus a spare one for Nashi, so Niko, Nashi and Kaito should still have theirs.)
Curious about why Zendikar's door was closed. Did the house come in contact with the eldrazi a while back and was like "Nope!" not knowing that the eldrazi are no longer (on Zendikar)?
https://seananmcguire.com/blog/2024/08/26/dont-give-up-the-dvd-extras/
Vraska and loot fell for Valgavoths door trap and he came in to save them.
The Zendikar door I think is a nod to how Nahiri has said she's cutting Zendikar off from the rest of the multiverse.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
...i will not be surprised if one of the main characters in this story dies and i'm talking from chapter 1
the only one thats safe is Kaito because he's promoted in foundations
as a matter of fact kaito has infinite lives because the ending of chapter 4 is him planeswalking back to ravnica going back to the starting line.
-We do seem to be building to an "in-character" theory/reason for the Spark Rupture; Aftermath stories talk on being caused by the sylex blast and/or the invasion tree, Ixalan 2 has Saheeli guess their sparks didn't just vanish and just went somewhere else and now Zimone talking how seemly sparks where a way for the Blind Eternities to be able to interact with the multiverse and now the omenpaths are filling that slot. While being drip fed and more character in story theorizing, might be important info for the future with Jace/Vraska/Loot. Also interesting that Zimone implies that even less planeswalkers seem to be sparking as well so it seems maybe inactive sparks vanished.* **
-Phyrexia: Yeah I think Phyrexia did invade. I do think its likely the house could present itself as low priority as Flisch guessed at but I could also see the Phyrexian struggle with the houses physics bending as they had similar issues with Xerex as well as likely the house letting the monsters have a free for all over the phyrexians.
-The nightmare having smokey magic and Jaces reaction might just be multiverse nightmares/nightmare magics just having those traits but I do wonder still if Ashiok was a native of Duskmourn (as mtg version of Freddy Krueger).
* Like I do know the real world reason is they are cutting back on planeswalker cards and they decided to focus more on pre-established planeswalker characters then making new character for the foreseeable future but still interesting to not that less new planeswalkers seem to be appearing in universe.
** The story lead talked on many of the planeswalkers where faces/mascot for certain planes and could still be that as legendary creatures (citing Will and Rowan for Eldraine) so likely characters like Annie, Proft and Mabel would have been planeswalkers under old marketing so know my head canon now is they had dorment sparks that got ruptured as well.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
A creation myth for the beasties
My thoughts given both combined: