MTG Salvation

I also enjoyed the story of The Black Rose. Reminds me a little of the "Battle of wits" scene in the Princess Bride for some reason.
I'm wondering if there is any overarching narrative for this set, and what role Dack plays in it, or if this is just a world presented to us a la Homelands.

Yes, people can be evil, but otherwise "good" people can do evil deeds. I know I've done quite a few things in my life I've needed to ask forgiveness for. and whether it was intended or not, people still got hurt and I still misrepresented - if not downright compromised - my core values and beliefs.
A lot of people I've hurt don't give a flying durn about my intent, or whether I am repentant or not. In their eyes, what I did was evil.

We can call specific actions evil without judging the character of the person committing the act. We can also do the same with intentions, and possibly make a general statement based on a character's personality type.

to call Liliana evil because she has done evil deeds would be the same as calling Toshi Umezawa and even Urza evil. Both of these characters are highly revered in MTG canon, but they've both committed some pretty heinious acts in their respective stories...and they were the GOOD guys.

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I'm going to second the suggestion for Torment and Nemesis. Nemesis unfortunately has a pretty sizable amount of backstory before going in (as it's in the middle of the Weatherlight Saga) but it's basically Weatherlight's Empire Strikes Back in that it's really dark thematically, set on the villains' world, and the protagonist doesn't have a happy ending.

Torment is more stand alone, and it's essentially about the protagonist's descent into horror. Also he summons awesome nightmare-monsters.

This.

Torment and Nemesis are by fat MTG's darkest books. You also can't go wrong with Shadowmoor. Eventide wasn't as dark and scary as it could have /should have been, as it was basically all of the legendary creatures of Lorwyn reuniting for one big showdown with Oona. no horror there.

But then, you have the darkest, most terrifying MTG book of all.....LEGIONS! Cringe in horror as Akroma is turned into some wierd griffin thing. Cower in terror as Braids is portrayed completely against her established character! Feel the fear as Kamahl whines and does absolutely nothing until the end of the book! allow the morbid curiosity of watching Phage bump uglies with the First to overtake you! All that, and you get the mortifying, hide-under-the-sheets-worthy, EPIC...dice games...to boot! huzzah!

My theory: In that thing between his horn lie all of his intricate plots and schemes so he doesn't have to devote mindspace to it. Sorta like a big, magical flashdrive.

Also in there: the socks you were going to wear today but chose not to because of Bolas' mind control. It's all part of the master plan...

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As much as I respect your position and authority as a storyline guru and lore keeper I disagree with you whole heartedly about seeing Narset/Sarkhan as a "hook up." From what I understand, Elspeth's feelings for Daxos were pretty clearly stated but it seemed like Narset and Sarkhan were just friends and personally really hope it stays that way.

Yeah, while I didn't get to read Godsend I'm pretty sure that Elspeth knew Daxos from a long time ago and her feelings for him developed long before the events of the Theros Block. As for Narset and Sarkhan I don't see any difference between they're "random hookup" and a romantic relationship between Chandra and Gideon. Narset made Sarkhan feel peaceful in his otherwise ravaged mind. Chandra makes Gideon question his alliances and his beliefs. I think either of these relationships is fine but I don't think calling one a random hookup while thinking the other is fine is a good way to look at it. Personally I think Sarkhan deserves a nice lady to accompany him after all the crap he's been through. And if Chandra can get Gideon to lighten(heh) up a little then great. I do think it would be interesting if they explored planeswalkers relationships with each other more which it seems is what they will be doing in the future. I mean we know that Jace and Lilli were a thing once upon a time.

And see that bolded idea is precisely why I think that Sarkhan and Narset should NOT be a couple. I have a real problem with this idea in fiction that the significant other is a prize or reward for the main character having gone through something difficult. It's especially prominent with male leads and female love interests but with any character it reduces them to the status of "prize to be won." Heck, as much as I like Narset's little duel with Zurgo it still bothered me a bit because even though they planned on bringing her back through time travel shenanigans, killing Narset to motivate Sarkhan, even if they're only friends (as I believe they are intended to be) smacked of the Women in Refrigerators trope for me.

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I can see her as being a more useful (storywise) version of Tamiyo (because who wants to read about rabbit planeswalekrs).

Well, I do

Quote from TerrorKingA »

Sarkhan: "Screw this world I've always wanted! One person that I barely know may or may not be dead in it! SCREW IT, I say!"

I mean what lol. Tarkir is such a dumb place. Let's just hurry up and get to Magic Origins stuff, because Tarkir's story is nonsensical.

OH NOES!!! A character aligned to magic characterized by being guided by wildly swinging and unstable emotions is acting according to his wildly swinging and unstable emotions!

The plot is being driven by a character who can't control his emotions and has a dubious grasp on reality; I'd be disappointed if weird and somewhat nonsensical stuff didn't happen.

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Why the heck is Sarkhan caring so much about Narset a deal breaker?

Because it makes no sense from his character or the story as a whole.

It's jarring, forced, and distracting.

He knew her for a matter of HOURS and even though they totally had a connection, it's just... nonsensical to be THAT attached to someone you barely met.

Sarkhan hasn't exactly been the perfect picture of mental health.

As I said above. Jarring, forced, distracting, nonsensical, loony, unhinged, broken, schizophrenic, etc... These are pretty much Sarkhan's shtick. If Sarkhan behaved in a rational manner, it would be seriously OOC, and that would be a serious plot hole.

As for different versions of the same people being around over a thousand years after the point where history was changed, and how that doesn't mesh with the current understanding of the so-called "butterfly effect;" our protagonist in this story is a human uses the mystical energy of fire and rage to transform into a genetically impossible, six-limbed, flying reptile that blatantly ignores the square-cube law to maintain flight (spontaneously generating several hundred kilos of mass out of where?). He uses another kind of mystical energy generated by the corpse of a another genetically impossible, six-limbed, flying reptile (this time with added bigness) to time travel into the past and save that long-dead reptile from an even older and larger genetically impossible, six-limbed, flying reptile. This has the effect of ensuring the survival of one or more species of magically generated, genetically impossible, six- (and eight-) limbed, flying reptiles that had gone extinct, fundamentally altering the timeline of the world.

And people complain that the story doesn't follow scientific and/or logical understandings of temporal mechanics.

Just enjoy the ride people, not all stories have to fit into your logic to be enjoyed. And lets be clear on this; entertainment is more important than logic in these stories. If your willing suspension of disbelief can't extend that far, then maybe you should either stick to harder forms of speculative fiction or avoid the genre altogether. I'm not saying that to be snarky; fantasy requires a stretch of acceptance that not everyone can make. When you go as far as MtG's setting goes, applying real-world logic or modern scientific knowledge to it can be a sure-fire way to ruin your experience of the story. There's a large degree of internal consistency within the Tarkir storyline IMO, and most of the problems people point out with it come from outside Tarkir ("This previous MtG storyline was better"), outside MtG ("I like how franchise X did time travel more than this"), or meta problems ("I hate time travel stories"). I don't like all the characters (Sidisi and Shu Yun were particularly underdeveloped, I think) and there was rather weak writing on some of the "filler" entries; but the main plot so far has been pretty good, especially since Sarkhan's little time-jump back. I like that even though Sarkhan has a better sense of himself, he's still wildly emotional and having a hard time understanding the effects of his actions in the past.

The reason why the new Tarkir has all the characters from the old Tarkir, while in reality, if you change things in the past, some people may not even exist in the future, is because of Kamigawa.

When WOTC made Kamigawa, they looked into the Japanese mythology stuff, and made it faithful to the real thing. The reason it failed was because it wasn't faithful to people's expectations of Japanese mythology, or at least that was what Maro said in his blog.

So learning their lesson, rather than making it faithful to what would happen in reality, they made it faithful to people's expectations, and a alternate present just doesn't work if there is nothing to compare it to.

Tarkir's a red plane. I stopped expecting it to make sense a long time ago. Sarkhan is emotional. He made a connection with Narset (they could have been traveling on foot for days or even weeks to get to that bloody chasm) and he watched her die at the hands of a dude he hated and couldn't do anything to stop it. Naturally he'd want to fix that and hope that it would have been fixed with changing of the timeline. And time doesn't necessarily matter for making a lifelong friend. One of my closest friends and I became such after our first conversation and were completing each other's sentences 20 minutes in. I'm not even as emotionally driven as Sarkhan so imagine how he's feeling here.

Quote from Highlander »

I wouldn't be happy with a trip to Theros for next week's UR. Theros already had a whole block, and I'm sure that there will be plenty of URs that are set in Theros during the core set season. We're in Tarkir right now, I want URs about Tarkir. Mostly I really would like to see Silumgar act blue somehow, but I'll take random worldbuilding stuff as well.

I felt that Silumgar did actually act blue (while Tasigur is a very unblue character, hes emotional, illogical, doesn't think things through). Silumgar seems like a schemer. I read that he planned the attack on the Khan's peace summit. He manipulated Tasigur to lead him and Ojutai there, because he knew it was a place where he could get rid of all the khans at once. While at the same time he does this all for power (like all good Black characters), which is why he didn't keep up his end of the bargain, and instead enslaved him. Doing this instead of killing him, I think is also somewhat blueish because while killing Tasigur gets the job done, and gets him more power, enslaving him keeps around a resource he might need later, and reminds the Naga why they follow Silumgar. I mean you can also read these actions as a big cruel dummy, but I feel like if he were just black he'd have killed Tasigur a long time ago, and not have bothered with something like this attack.

I personally like him the best. He does what he wants, betters his position, uses his advantages to their fullest potential, doesn't bother with stupid ideological crap to justify what he's doing (or really waste his time with it), and actually does something other than "going fast" and "eating." Plus, nobody yells at him for being immoral. Well, they do, but he's UB, so nobody really argues that he has any other motives other than having a bunch of underlings. Which is fun anyways. I wish I had underlings.

I'd really like to see Kologhan and Atarka fleshed (get it? Atarka, fleshed?) out as characters in the next two weeks. I feel like that's what's going to happen, since we've gotten a story on Silumgar, Ojutai and Dromoka already.