Well, I liked the story enough. Still not a fan of the senseless "last chapter battles" but I guess that's Magic.
I think this was overall a pretty emotional piece with Nashi's parts. Kinda makes me wish the story would have narratively centered around him, rather than his rescue party so the payoff at the end with his mother would have had more impact, but I don't want to complain. (Too much ) I think this was the strongest of the main stories.
Odd that Winter got killed. I expected him to have a change of heart and help the people escape after he was denied his reward or something. Effectively switching teams after realizing he can't trust his demon overlord and these strangers apparently have the means to escape Duskmourn.
Well, I liked the story enough. Still not a fan of the senseless "last chapter battles" but I guess that's Magic.
I think this was overall a pretty emotional piece with Nashi's parts. Kinda makes me wish the story would have narratively centered around him, rather than his rescue party so the payoff at the end with his mother would have had more impact, but I don't want to complain. (Too much ) I think this was the strongest of the main stories.
Odd that Winter got killed. I expected him to have a change of heart and help the people escape after he was denied his reward or something. Effectively switching teams after realizing he can't trust his demon overlord and these strangers apparently have the means to escape Duskmourn.
im theorizing winter insn't dead vagavoth said he's a man of his word he's probably giving it to him in a different sense
maybe hes gonna use winter as a vessel to travel the mutiverse to plant the seeds so the house can get to those planes.
Yeah, I think I misread. I thought the text specifically said Winter was pulled into the wound, but it was just stated he was pulled high towards Val's chest.
So Winter is unlikely to be dead then.
As for nobody dying: I think this is another thing that would have made the story following Nashi more engaging. You could have picked off characters one by one to keep the body count high without killing off brand characters. Then just have the rescue party show up in the last chapter for the final battle.
Val being the big bad for the arc resolution (the one after Strixhaven) makes sense I guess. Thought it would be the Fomori, but maybe the Fomori are the big bad of the arc after.
i think this will connect the fomori since loot is easily connected to them.
oh someone on reddit is theorizing something but i feel its far fetched
Dr_edd_itwhat
Gonna throw a theory out here; the reason Winter was inexplicably free and not halfway into Innistrad was because that's not Winter. It's Jace in disguise, and he's about to ride Valgavoth's mind from the inside like the universe's biggest puppet show. He's got the map to everything, he's got doors to everything. Jace's got Plans
Jace not still making an effort to rescue Loot seems out of character (he still wants Loot for Vraska, he was following what looks like Vraska and Loot last time we saw him), so I'm still holding out hope that we get an epilogue involving Jace trying to rescue Loot tomorrow. The author even said in the last DVD Extra that she'll be making one more blog post dissecting the Duskmourn story or part of it, and I hope that comes with an epilogue story!
i think this will connect the fomori since loot is easily connected to them.
oh someone on reddit is theorizing something but i feel its far fetched
Dr_edd_itwhat
Gonna throw a theory out here; the reason Winter was inexplicably free and not halfway into Innistrad was because that's not Winter. It's Jace in disguise, and he's about to ride Valgavoth's mind from the inside like the universe's biggest puppet show. He's got the map to everything, he's got doors to everything. Jace's got Plans
Far-fetched but possible, since it's never explicitly stated that Winter ever got out of his shard, and we know Jace has pulled off a convincing visual disguise before.
Also, it's ambiguous whether Valgavoth ever actually turns the door to Innistrad to dust - the only report of that happening might be a Fateshifter vision - but the door being inexplicably opened is suspicious (because only Winter is incentivized to open it, and the real Winter would have run through the open door long ago), which means the open door might be one of Jace's illusions. How did Jace learn about Winter so quickly, and how did he mess up the door illusion so badly? At least Jace not doing enough research and behaving OOC for his disguise is in character for him.
I totally buy the idea of Valgavoth invading other planes with Omen Paths.
Valgavoth's power is kinda similar to Emrakul's, except Valgavoth has clear direction in how he will reshape things while Emrakul feels "uncertain" (due to her being incomplete), therefore her creations all became wiggles.
Can Valgavoth match Emrakul in power? Perhaps Emrakul would emerge and be the final vanguard against Valgavoth as he changes the multiverse to his... or that particular person's liking.
I'd love to see Emrakul, one of the three big bads (Bolas, Phyrexia, Eldrazis), being the hero that saves the day. Her departure from the moon would like be done with Aminatou's help.
Actually I kind of have a far fetched/tin foil theory myself
and It goes back to helgas vision in Bloomburrow
"The kings in the dark will return," "The mage in blue will bring about the end."
im wondering if the fomori is a red herring
“The kings” — Ulamog and Kozilek (both considered male)
“In the dark” — the Blind eternies
“Will return” — somehow the deaths are undone .(involving jaces plane”
and “the end” successfully doing a redemption arc for him and vraska by ending Valgavoth (bring the end of valgavoths terror)
basically Jace realizes the only chance they have on stopping Valgavoth due to his power is the eldrazi’s are strong enough and figures out how to undo the two others.
and the plane Duskmourn is on maybe that’s the lane the eldrazi titans we’re looking for all along since zendikar and innistrad were wrong (the recycle planes theory)
Actually I kind of have a far fetched/tin foil theory myself
and It goes back to helgas vision in Bloomburrow
"The kings in the dark will return," "The mage in blue will bring about the end."
im wondering if the fomori is a red herring
“The kings” — Ulamog and Kozilek (both considered male)
“In the dark” — the Blind eternies
“Will return” — somehow the deaths are undone .(involving jaces plane”
and “the end” successfully doing a redemption arc for him and vraska by ending Valgavoth (bring the end of valgavoths terror)
basically Jace realizes the only chance they have on stopping Valgavoth due to his power is the eldrazi’s are strong enough and figures out how to undo the two others.
and the plane Duskmourn is on maybe that’s the lane the eldrazi titans we’re looking for all along since zendikar and innistrad were wrong (the recycle planes theory)
Assuming the theory that the "Winter" in the last scene next to the inexplicably open door to Innistrad is actually Jace instead is correct (this seems increasingly believable the more I investigate that suspiciously open door), I don't think Jace is that interested in killing Valgavoth if he can hijack enough of Valgavoth's powers through being incorporated into the demon. Wizards has been increasingly painting Jace, Vraska, and Loot as unstable neutrals at best and going down a villainous path at worst. I'm inclined to believe that Jace hijacks enough of Valgavoth's powers in tomorrow's epilogue (gosh, I want an epilogue, at least) to open Omenpaths himself, then asks Loot where he wants to go next...then Loot announces that he wants to go home and report his vault-guarding results to his superiors. Cue the space opera set and possibly the UFO.
Sorry for the double post, but the Planeswalker's Guide to Duskmourn got updates:
Valgavoth used to be a tiny thing (though he was bound to the house at the time, so you can argue this is a Hoopa-Confined situation and that pre-binding Valgavoth used to be much bigger, a la Hoopa-Unbound)
Marina threatened to burn down (a much smaller but still overly large) House Duskmourn if Valgavoth wouldn't restore the house back to normal; Valgavoth didn't want to burn to death with the house, so he granted Marina her normality field (although Valgavoth will gladly later report that he gave Marina her "heart's desire" after she sacrificed school bullies to him)
Others have reported inconsistencies between Marina's diary in Episode 5 and the Planeswalker's Guide; I am inclined to think that the authors of both works did not sync up with each other, seeing as the author of the Episodes admits making up characters out of whole cloth and not just using characters made by Creative for at least one side story
The House slowly makes survivors think they always lived in the House and just learned about the outside/other planes/etc. secondhand - this includes Omenpath travellers - this might explain Winter's contradictory stories about his origin, as his initial implications that he's a House native are likely to be his newly placed default way of thinking (helped by his cynicism), while his revealing that he came from elsewhere are probably only after he mulled over his past and his greatest desires again (admittedly, https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1f62aau/comment/lkxp3he claims that Winter's initial implications that he's a native are just stuff the author forgot to change when Winter's backstory was changed partway through development)
Most cellarspawn are less-than-consciously spawned by Valgavoth, but the overlords were deliberately created by Valgavoth to enact his will
In the meantime, I'm still waiting for that post-mortem blog post...and hopefully a proper post-mortem epilogue story that explains that inexplicably open door to Winter's home plane that Winter inexplicably didn't go through.
Has anyone given an explanation how Norin has ended in Duskmourn? Has he become inmortal some how? Time travel? I need something is quite random they use him
Has anyone given an explanation how Norin has ended in Duskmourn? Has he become inmortal some how? Time travel? I need something is quite random they use him
In Time Spiral, he was plucked from time (as part of temporal issues of the Mending) and brought to then modern day (as of Time Spiral block). At the end of the story, he disappeared. We assumed that he was returned to the time he came from, but apparently he was sent forward in time.
I guess to put it this way Valgavoth was doing this whole thing before the mending even started.
So based on this Norin during the Time Spiral block/story Valgavoth planted one of his doors near where Norin was, so he could never return back to the original time line.
The big one is the key to why marina had a safe haven around her
Faced with the full truth at last of what she had done, Marina confronted the entity and demanded it stop. If it didn't, she would burn the entire house down. Powerful though he was, the demon was still bound by his original summoners' curse. Destroying the house would kill him as well. With no other choice, the demon agreed to give her back the world as she remembered it. Marina accepted, relieved that she had bested the demon and restored the world to normality … as far as she could perceive, anyways.
In reality, the house continued to expand. The horrors continued to increase, drowning all who lived within in terror. And the demon grew in power, until the entirety of the plane was swallowed up in the walls of Duskmourn.
ooooh my gosh that’s a immensely large gamble if marina even figures out at all that Valgavoth tricked her he’s done for.
And that’s why marina was in denial of what tyvar and zimone told her she thought she fixed everything but in reality she was tricked
In the meantime, I'm still waiting for that post-mortem blog post...and hopefully a proper post-mortem epilogue story that explains that inexplicably open door to Winter's home plane that Winter inexplicably didn't go through.
I don't think the door was still there. It specifically said Winter was leaning against the wall where the door had been abandoned. How could he lean against the wall if there was still a door? He'd be leaning against the door.
In the meantime, I'm still waiting for that post-mortem blog post...and hopefully a proper post-mortem epilogue story that explains that inexplicably open door to Winter's home plane that Winter inexplicably didn't go through.
I don't think the door was still there. It specifically said Winter was leaning against the wall where the door had been abandoned. How could he lean against the wall if there was still a door? He'd be leaning against the door.
The bonus story is 30 doors long, so I can't efficiently copy and paste it here.
As for your second question, I'll start with the quote from Episode 6:
and paused at the sight of Winter, huddled against the wall where the door to the cursed moon's benighted land had been opened and abandoned.
While we can explain Winter's current state here as his shard popping around him while Niko was escaping instead of paying attention, and the door might in fact be gone at this point, Winter never got to open that door to his home plane, and neither did anyone else while we were looking at the door. Either Valgavoth opened that door off-screen as a taunt while Winter was stuck inside his shard (note that the DVD Extras for Episode 6 say that "Valgavoth knew exactly what he was doing" when sending Winter to the door), or...
That Winter next to the wall isn't Winter - it's Jace trying to rescue Loot and hijack some of Valgavoth's Omenpath-creating powers at the same time. Perhaps Jace even let Vraska and Loot try that Omenpath to Duskmourn in the first place, knowing this would happen....
Final thoughts and just touching on stuff over all;
Winter- Poor guy, the funny thing is if he hadn't betrayed them he might have been able to escape. I think he's dead but I wouldn't hate to see him turned into a herald or avatar of val as suggested.
Winter's door- Yeah not really sure why this is a huge deal. We have;
Niko grabbed for the doorknob—an unknown plane would be better than this. They could find an Omenpath to get them out. Valgavoth roared again, and the door was gone, falling to dust under Niko's fingers. They lifted their head to glare at the enormous moth demon, readying another shard.
Then Niko was killed and fate changed and we got;
The world snapped like a tightened bowstring, and Niko was looking up at Valgavoth.
So pretty clearly that Val got rid of the door and Niko even fate shifted back to right after he did so. And the quote
the door to the cursed moon's benighted land had been opened and abandoned.
Imo is just Grant using a bit higher grade prose to say Val opened the door and now closed it.
Death count- I think we should have had more deaths, the rats that got killed off that came with Nashi was okay but I felt like we could have used a few more. I don't mind the heroes didn't die, even in horror movies the final survivors you can tell has some plot armor and the literal plot armor with Aminatou was fine. Also interesting we never got Nashi or Kaito burned up, wonder if that will matter later.
Aftermath- I do like we are getting more consequences from the Phyrexian war. I know people wanted planes fully destroyed or tons of deaths but I do like we are seeing stuff like Duskmourn/ Val being able to spread and character like Wanderer's guilt over killing Tamiyo and Niko who are on new character pathways after being desaprked and I will amit the fact we got a Gatewatch Next Generation story was fine and I'll swallow this needing character to be desparked to fit card wise.
Nashi- Can this kid get a break, this is 5 times he's lost parents now; both his bio parents in AoA, Tamiyo being taken and compleated, Tamiyo being killed and now Tamiyo's living memory being dispelled. That said I like his arc and the idea be might travel to other planes to spin stories of Duskmourn as warnings. Related to above, truely creepy that the mutiverse is a bit more in danger from the doors on duskmourn appearing.
Marina- I def think her illusion bubble is partly her refusing to see how things are, partly as she thinks she won. I also do agree that I think Val needs to keep her alive and likely she is the only one with any power to stop him or try and reverse things.
Cliff Hanger- We might get an epilogue but I feel like we kind reached the end. While there is some plot threads hanging, the new stories team goal is to not let plot theards go on too long (as see with the "what happened to Jace/Vraska") so I'm ready to see how this rolls out. Not sure I see Val being the new big bad, a new threat sure, but I think we will have him on a bus once loot is saved and maybe a big bad later on. He reminds me of Bolas but less plotting and scheme and more of the just super powerful and evil/not nice force.
Worldbulding- Honesty one of the better ones wotc has done imo, we have lot of inner workings and the plane has a whole history we saw tastes of and leaves room to see more of. Need to wait to see the cards and legends articles but def enjoying it.
Misc- Glad to see Aminatou in a story at last, wish we got more of her but better then just a bio. Yay glad someone remembered Wanderers ability to absorb kinetic energy. I wanna punch Jace and him and Vraska failing as parents right off feels strangely on brand for them.
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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"
okay nashi is definitely not a young kid with a voice like that
thats Definitely within the college/adult age easily
the Mistake with this trailer is in the term “it’s one or the other not both” (the mtg part with nashi and attempted acting a horror movie from actors.)
So I have noticed that on various social media people have shifted their dislike about Duskmourn from "modern stuff in MtG is bad and too far from the usual" to "it is too grimdark to care" to "there is too much levity, the survivors don't look like they are in a hellscape" to "it's too trope filled and uncreative" and even a mix of all of these, even ignoring the contradictions that appear that way. And I also notice a lot of bad faith arguments which indicate that some people either don't read the stories at all but still judge as if they did (I have seen people call out Maro for the story allegedly showing that, in contrast to all previous indications, there are no more modern looking gadgets and now the cards are full of them, which is just straight up false) or are not willing to even think about how something fits into the worldbuilding, taking the worst and laziest sounding explanations to make it look bad.
Not saying that this is always unfair (like pretty much every set, there are some flavor text clunkers and some weird inclusions) but the vitriole seems way stronger than for worlds with much less stringent and well thought-out worldbuilding like Ikoria (and, don't shoot me for saying that, Bloomburow, which I found rather uninspired aside from the "people who planeswalk there mysteriously become animals" thing). Many people seem unwilling to give this one a chance and quite frankly, I don't get it. Not the dislike (again, it was pretty clear from the start this one would be a polarizing set) but that the worldbuilding is blamed. I'll be honest, I really like it.
The stories were (for the most part) really great and fleshed out what the nicely done Planeswalker's Guide didn't. And I don't see a problem with cheerleaders and "well-looking" survivors. These are simply either recent arrivals or the set shows off some survivors during the ascension or immediately after (multiple cards even indicate that Glimmerburst for example). Not that much of a stretch.
Am I the only one thinking that this set's worldbuilding gets extraordinary (and partly lazy or hypocritical) scrutiny applied to it? And if it does, why?
I think, rather like Wizards initially promoting Streets of New Capenna as having more demons than the version at release did, Wizards didn't promote Duskmourn with enough nuance or enough warning about the light-hearted horror aspects.
The story gives no impression that the survivors dress snappily after a certain point, unlike some of the Survivor cards. The main party and even the side story characters never meet any camp zombie sprinter, person stuck inside a TV, benign vampire (although I expect all of House Duskmourn to have exactly one benign vampire at most), or any of the other more light-hearted, apparently 80s horror references the cards contain.
I've seen substantial criticism in Reddit lately that too high a percentage of Duskmourn's cards are light-hearted, to the point of not treating their audience seriously. Frankly, I agree with them - at least that we were not warned at all how light-hearted the cards could be. These light-hearted cards should have gotten representation in the main story or at least a side story. Instead, the main story was grimdark pretty much all the way through, with Tyvar being stuck providing the lighter moments. Heck, Tyvar's "I love fighting all these horrors at the same time! Bring me more!" characterization in the cards is a stark contrast to his behaviour in the story, where Tyvar smartly cloaks himself and his ally Zimone in the House precisely to avoid fighting.
The Planeswalker's Guide was grimdark, with the possible exception of the beasties and gremlins (and notably not the zombies or glitch ghosts, which did get comedic cards).
This mood whiplash gives me the impression that world-building and storytelling for Duskmourn was uncoordinated and haphazard at best. As much as I appreciate the saving throw of the Episodes' author providing twice the stories that Wizards anticipated, especially the "House swallows the Elves" story that is great for world-building, I really wish in retrospect that this author threw in at least one campy zombie, glitch ghost, or passing survivor (vampire or otherwise) in any of the stories, and I wish that the versions of Marina's back-story in the Episodes and the Planeswalker's Guide were completely consistent with each other.
I think, rather like Wizards initially promoting Streets of New Capenna as having more demons than the version at release did, Wizards didn't promote Duskmourn with enough nuance or enough warning about the light-hearted horror aspects.
The story gives no impression that the survivors dress snappily after a certain point, unlike some of the Survivor cards. The main party and even the side story characters never meet any camp zombie sprinter, person stuck inside a TV, benign vampire (although I expect all of House Duskmourn to have exactly one benign vampire at most), or any of the other more light-hearted, apparently 80s horror references the cards contain.
I've seen substantial criticism in Reddit lately that too high a percentage of Duskmourn's cards are light-hearted, to the point of not treating their audience seriously. Frankly, I agree with them - at least that we were not warned at all how light-hearted the cards could be. These light-hearted cards should have gotten representation in the main story or at least a side story. Instead, the main story was grimdark pretty much all the way through, with Tyvar being stuck providing the lighter moments. Heck, Tyvar's "I love fighting all these horrors at the same time! Bring me more!" characterization in the cards is a stark contrast to his behaviour in the story, where Tyvar smartly cloaks himself and his ally Zimone in the House precisely to avoid fighting.
The Planeswalker's Guide was grimdark, with the possible exception of the beasties and gremlins (and notably not the zombies or glitch ghosts, which did get comedic cards).
This mood whiplash gives me the impression that world-building and storytelling for Duskmourn was uncoordinated and haphazard at best. As much as I appreciate the saving throw of the Episodes' author providing twice the stories that Wizards anticipated, especially the "House swallows the Elves" story that is great for world-building, I really wish in retrospect that this author threw in at least one campy zombie, glitch ghost, or passing survivor (vampire or otherwise) in any of the stories, and I wish that the versions of Marina's back-story in the Episodes and the Planeswalker's Guide were completely consistent with each other.
Again, I still don't think that has something to do with bad worldbuilding, especially not if you are right (because then it is about not meeting expectations, a problem that is not connected to worldbuilding but to marketing). As I said previously, there is no worldbuilding disconnect between the clean survivors and more lighthearted cards and the later extreme horror and despair, they are simply depicting either newcomers from other planes using all they can find around the house to survive (by the way, aside from Winter, who is a special case, we don't meet one survivor from a different plane at all who was not one of the main characters, we only hear of them, and they seem to fit the more hopeful and lighthearted depictions on some of these cards) or survivors of the previous world directly after or during the ascension of the house, which explains them not being the downtrodden, almost jaded survivors of later generations.
If anything, as I said, it is a marketing problem: pure horror doesn't sell. I know a lot of people for whom sheer undiluted horror would mean that they would ignore the set altogether. The story can be set during the most hopeless times of Duskmourn, but the cards cannot unless you want to push away these players. Even then, I would argue that it doesn't take away from the horror, humor IS a common defense mechanism against horrors after all (and usually doesn't help even in the more lighthearted flavor texts of Duskmourn) and the early levity of the survivors just means that they are going to be crushed sooner or later by the House (which in itself is a horror trope).
And while yes, I heard about the New Capenna stuff too, it didn't nearly get this (I think exaggerated) level of worldbuilding scrutiny, even though it probably had bigger problems than Duskmourn (I am still confused ab out how exactly the day to day governance of the city works).
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I think this was overall a pretty emotional piece with Nashi's parts. Kinda makes me wish the story would have narratively centered around him, rather than his rescue party so the payoff at the end with his mother would have had more impact, but I don't want to complain. (Too much
Odd that Winter got killed. I expected him to have a change of heart and help the people escape after he was denied his reward or something. Effectively switching teams after realizing he can't trust his demon overlord and these strangers apparently have the means to escape Duskmourn.
im theorizing winter insn't dead vagavoth said he's a man of his word he's probably giving it to him in a different sense
maybe hes gonna use winter as a vessel to travel the mutiverse to plant the seeds so the house can get to those planes.
So Winter is unlikely to be dead then.
As for nobody dying: I think this is another thing that would have made the story following Nashi more engaging. You could have picked off characters one by one to keep the body count high without killing off brand characters. Then just have the rescue party show up in the last chapter for the final battle.
Val being the big bad for the arc resolution (the one after Strixhaven) makes sense I guess. Thought it would be the Fomori, but maybe the Fomori are the big bad of the arc after.
oh someone on reddit is theorizing something but i feel its far fetched
Dr_edd_itwhat
Gonna throw a theory out here; the reason Winter was inexplicably free and not halfway into Innistrad was because that's not Winter. It's Jace in disguise, and he's about to ride Valgavoth's mind from the inside like the universe's biggest puppet show. He's got the map to everything, he's got doors to everything. Jace's got Plans
Far-fetched but possible, since it's never explicitly stated that Winter ever got out of his shard, and we know Jace has pulled off a convincing visual disguise before.
Also, it's ambiguous whether Valgavoth ever actually turns the door to Innistrad to dust - the only report of that happening might be a Fateshifter vision - but the door being inexplicably opened is suspicious (because only Winter is incentivized to open it, and the real Winter would have run through the open door long ago), which means the open door might be one of Jace's illusions. How did Jace learn about Winter so quickly, and how did he mess up the door illusion so badly? At least Jace not doing enough research and behaving OOC for his disguise is in character for him.
Valgavoth's power is kinda similar to Emrakul's, except Valgavoth has clear direction in how he will reshape things while Emrakul feels "uncertain" (due to her being incomplete), therefore her creations all became wiggles.
Can Valgavoth match Emrakul in power? Perhaps Emrakul would emerge and be the final vanguard against Valgavoth as he changes the multiverse to his... or that particular person's liking.
I'd love to see Emrakul, one of the three big bads (Bolas, Phyrexia, Eldrazis), being the hero that saves the day. Her departure from the moon would like be done with Aminatou's help.
Shu Yun, the Silent Tempest WUR Voltron Control
Temmet, Vizier of Naktamun WU Unblockable Mirror Trickery
Ra's al Ghul (Sidar Kondo) and Face-Down Ninjas
Brudiclad, Token Engineer
Vaevictis (VV2) the Dire Lantern
Rona, Disciple of Gix
Tiana the Auror
Hallar
Ulrich the Politician
Zur the Rebel
Scorpion, Locust, Scarab, Egyptian Gods
O-Kagachi, Mathas, Mairsil
"Non-Tribal" Tribal Generals, Eggs
and It goes back to helgas vision in Bloomburrow
im wondering if the fomori is a red herring
“The kings” — Ulamog and Kozilek (both considered male)
“In the dark” — the Blind eternies
“Will return” — somehow the deaths are undone .(involving jaces plane”
and “the end” successfully doing a redemption arc for him and vraska by ending Valgavoth (bring the end of valgavoths terror)
basically Jace realizes the only chance they have on stopping Valgavoth due to his power is the eldrazi’s are strong enough and figures out how to undo the two others.
and the plane Duskmourn is on maybe that’s the lane the eldrazi titans we’re looking for all along since zendikar and innistrad were wrong (the recycle planes theory)
Assuming the theory that the "Winter" in the last scene next to the inexplicably open door to Innistrad is actually Jace instead is correct (this seems increasingly believable the more I investigate that suspiciously open door), I don't think Jace is that interested in killing Valgavoth if he can hijack enough of Valgavoth's powers through being incorporated into the demon. Wizards has been increasingly painting Jace, Vraska, and Loot as unstable neutrals at best and going down a villainous path at worst. I'm inclined to believe that Jace hijacks enough of Valgavoth's powers in tomorrow's epilogue (gosh, I want an epilogue, at least) to open Omenpaths himself, then asks Loot where he wants to go next...then Loot announces that he wants to go home and report his vault-guarding results to his superiors. Cue the space opera set and possibly the UFO.
there’s clearly no epilogue story since I don't see the article add a epilogue story along Mira grants preview card
so As far as I’m concerned Jace did the biggest goof yet
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/magic-story/side-six-its-a-beautiful-day
The bad news: it's a Choose Your Own Adventure story. So no learning whether Vraska ever got out of the House.
The hint to unlock the story is really on point, and I recommend clicking on every single door if you want to find story info.
- Valgavoth used to be a tiny thing (though he was bound to the house at the time, so you can argue this is a Hoopa-Confined situation and that pre-binding Valgavoth used to be much bigger, a la Hoopa-Unbound)
- Marina threatened to burn down (a much smaller but still overly large) House Duskmourn if Valgavoth wouldn't restore the house back to normal; Valgavoth didn't want to burn to death with the house, so he granted Marina her normality field (although Valgavoth will gladly later report that he gave Marina her "heart's desire" after she sacrificed school bullies to him)
- Others have reported inconsistencies between Marina's diary in Episode 5 and the Planeswalker's Guide; I am inclined to think that the authors of both works did not sync up with each other, seeing as the author of the Episodes admits making up characters out of whole cloth and not just using characters made by Creative for at least one side story
- The House slowly makes survivors think they always lived in the House and just learned about the outside/other planes/etc. secondhand - this includes Omenpath travellers - this might explain Winter's contradictory stories about his origin, as his initial implications that he's a House native are likely to be his newly placed default way of thinking (helped by his cynicism), while his revealing that he came from elsewhere are probably only after he mulled over his past and his greatest desires again (admittedly, https://www.reddit.com/r/magicTCG/comments/1f62aau/comment/lkxp3he claims that Winter's initial implications that he's a native are just stuff the author forgot to change when Winter's backstory was changed partway through development)
- Most cellarspawn are less-than-consciously spawned by Valgavoth, but the overlords were deliberately created by Valgavoth to enact his will
In the meantime, I'm still waiting for that post-mortem blog post...and hopefully a proper post-mortem epilogue story that explains that inexplicably open door to Winter's home plane that Winter inexplicably didn't go through.the big man’s words
https://markrosewater.tumblr.com/post/760378745878118400/how-exactly-is-norin-in-this-set-or-at-least
I guess to put it this way Valgavoth was doing this whole thing before the mending even started.
So based on this Norin during the Time Spiral block/story Valgavoth planted one of his doors near where Norin was, so he could never return back to the original time line.
https://magic.wizards.com/en/news/feature/planeswalkers-guide-to-duskmourn
The big one is the key to why marina had a safe haven around her
ooooh my gosh that’s a immensely large gamble if marina even figures out at all that Valgavoth tricked her he’s done for.
And that’s why marina was in denial of what tyvar and zimone told her she thought she fixed everything but in reality she was tricked
Is the story small enough for a copy-paste? Cause the UI doesn't work for me. pp
I don't think the door was still there. It specifically said Winter was leaning against the wall where the door had been abandoned. How could he lean against the wall if there was still a door? He'd be leaning against the door.
The bonus story is 30 doors long, so I can't efficiently copy and paste it here.
As for your second question, I'll start with the quote from Episode 6:
While we can explain Winter's current state here as his shard popping around him while Niko was escaping instead of paying attention, and the door might in fact be gone at this point, Winter never got to open that door to his home plane, and neither did anyone else while we were looking at the door. Either Valgavoth opened that door off-screen as a taunt while Winter was stuck inside his shard (note that the DVD Extras for Episode 6 say that "Valgavoth knew exactly what he was doing" when sending Winter to the door), or...
Winter- Poor guy, the funny thing is if he hadn't betrayed them he might have been able to escape. I think he's dead but I wouldn't hate to see him turned into a herald or avatar of val as suggested.
Winter's door- Yeah not really sure why this is a huge deal. We have;
Then Niko was killed and fate changed and we got;
So pretty clearly that Val got rid of the door and Niko even fate shifted back to right after he did so. And the quote
Imo is just Grant using a bit higher grade prose to say Val opened the door and now closed it.
Death count- I think we should have had more deaths, the rats that got killed off that came with Nashi was okay but I felt like we could have used a few more. I don't mind the heroes didn't die, even in horror movies the final survivors you can tell has some plot armor and the literal plot armor with Aminatou was fine. Also interesting we never got Nashi or Kaito burned up, wonder if that will matter later.
Aftermath- I do like we are getting more consequences from the Phyrexian war. I know people wanted planes fully destroyed or tons of deaths but I do like we are seeing stuff like Duskmourn/ Val being able to spread and character like Wanderer's guilt over killing Tamiyo and Niko who are on new character pathways after being desaprked and I will amit the fact we got a Gatewatch Next Generation story was fine and I'll swallow this needing character to be desparked to fit card wise.
Nashi- Can this kid get a break, this is 5 times he's lost parents now; both his bio parents in AoA, Tamiyo being taken and compleated, Tamiyo being killed and now Tamiyo's living memory being dispelled. That said I like his arc and the idea be might travel to other planes to spin stories of Duskmourn as warnings. Related to above, truely creepy that the mutiverse is a bit more in danger from the doors on duskmourn appearing.
Marina- I def think her illusion bubble is partly her refusing to see how things are, partly as she thinks she won. I also do agree that I think Val needs to keep her alive and likely she is the only one with any power to stop him or try and reverse things.
Cliff Hanger- We might get an epilogue but I feel like we kind reached the end. While there is some plot threads hanging, the new stories team goal is to not let plot theards go on too long (as see with the "what happened to Jace/Vraska") so I'm ready to see how this rolls out. Not sure I see Val being the new big bad, a new threat sure, but I think we will have him on a bus once loot is saved and maybe a big bad later on. He reminds me of Bolas but less plotting and scheme and more of the just super powerful and evil/not nice force.
Worldbulding- Honesty one of the better ones wotc has done imo, we have lot of inner workings and the plane has a whole history we saw tastes of and leaves room to see more of. Need to wait to see the cards and legends articles but def enjoying it.
Misc- Glad to see Aminatou in a story at last, wish we got more of her but better then just a bio. Yay glad someone remembered Wanderers ability to absorb kinetic energy. I wanna punch Jace and him and Vraska failing as parents right off feels strangely on brand for them.
"You can tell how dumb someone is by how they use Mary Sue"
his Voice……… he is faaaar from a kid his voice definitely sounds like College/Adult aged
We’re left in the dark of what happened to Jace and vraska again.
okay nashi is definitely not a young kid with a voice like that
thats Definitely within the college/adult age easily
the Mistake with this trailer is in the term “it’s one or the other not both” (the mtg part with nashi and attempted acting a horror movie from actors.)
Not saying that this is always unfair (like pretty much every set, there are some flavor text clunkers and some weird inclusions) but the vitriole seems way stronger than for worlds with much less stringent and well thought-out worldbuilding like Ikoria (and, don't shoot me for saying that, Bloomburow, which I found rather uninspired aside from the "people who planeswalk there mysteriously become animals" thing). Many people seem unwilling to give this one a chance and quite frankly, I don't get it. Not the dislike (again, it was pretty clear from the start this one would be a polarizing set) but that the worldbuilding is blamed. I'll be honest, I really like it.
The stories were (for the most part) really great and fleshed out what the nicely done Planeswalker's Guide didn't. And I don't see a problem with cheerleaders and "well-looking" survivors. These are simply either recent arrivals or the set shows off some survivors during the ascension or immediately after (multiple cards even indicate that Glimmerburst for example). Not that much of a stretch.
Am I the only one thinking that this set's worldbuilding gets extraordinary (and partly lazy or hypocritical) scrutiny applied to it? And if it does, why?
The story gives no impression that the survivors dress snappily after a certain point, unlike some of the Survivor cards. The main party and even the side story characters never meet any camp zombie sprinter, person stuck inside a TV, benign vampire (although I expect all of House Duskmourn to have exactly one benign vampire at most), or any of the other more light-hearted, apparently 80s horror references the cards contain.
I've seen substantial criticism in Reddit lately that too high a percentage of Duskmourn's cards are light-hearted, to the point of not treating their audience seriously. Frankly, I agree with them - at least that we were not warned at all how light-hearted the cards could be. These light-hearted cards should have gotten representation in the main story or at least a side story. Instead, the main story was grimdark pretty much all the way through, with Tyvar being stuck providing the lighter moments. Heck, Tyvar's "I love fighting all these horrors at the same time! Bring me more!" characterization in the cards is a stark contrast to his behaviour in the story, where Tyvar smartly cloaks himself and his ally Zimone in the House precisely to avoid fighting.
The Planeswalker's Guide was grimdark, with the possible exception of the beasties and gremlins (and notably not the zombies or glitch ghosts, which did get comedic cards).
This mood whiplash gives me the impression that world-building and storytelling for Duskmourn was uncoordinated and haphazard at best. As much as I appreciate the saving throw of the Episodes' author providing twice the stories that Wizards anticipated, especially the "House swallows the Elves" story that is great for world-building, I really wish in retrospect that this author threw in at least one campy zombie, glitch ghost, or passing survivor (vampire or otherwise) in any of the stories, and I wish that the versions of Marina's back-story in the Episodes and the Planeswalker's Guide were completely consistent with each other.
Especially Because some are saying “they really made the story so modern horror fits in the Mtg universe”
Again, I still don't think that has something to do with bad worldbuilding, especially not if you are right (because then it is about not meeting expectations, a problem that is not connected to worldbuilding but to marketing). As I said previously, there is no worldbuilding disconnect between the clean survivors and more lighthearted cards and the later extreme horror and despair, they are simply depicting either newcomers from other planes using all they can find around the house to survive (by the way, aside from Winter, who is a special case, we don't meet one survivor from a different plane at all who was not one of the main characters, we only hear of them, and they seem to fit the more hopeful and lighthearted depictions on some of these cards) or survivors of the previous world directly after or during the ascension of the house, which explains them not being the downtrodden, almost jaded survivors of later generations.
If anything, as I said, it is a marketing problem: pure horror doesn't sell. I know a lot of people for whom sheer undiluted horror would mean that they would ignore the set altogether. The story can be set during the most hopeless times of Duskmourn, but the cards cannot unless you want to push away these players. Even then, I would argue that it doesn't take away from the horror, humor IS a common defense mechanism against horrors after all (and usually doesn't help even in the more lighthearted flavor texts of Duskmourn) and the early levity of the survivors just means that they are going to be crushed sooner or later by the House (which in itself is a horror trope).
And while yes, I heard about the New Capenna stuff too, it didn't nearly get this (I think exaggerated) level of worldbuilding scrutiny, even though it probably had bigger problems than Duskmourn (I am still confused ab out how exactly the day to day governance of the city works).