Can someone spare me from reading this book and let me know the specifics of what went down with Chandra and Nissa? Spoiler drop down would be fine. I'm seeing a lot of smoke but don't know for sure the fire.
I felt Oko was one of the better villains we've had in quite some time. Makes me want to build a deck around him. The writer protrayed him as far more devious and intelligent than even Bolas in the WAR book. Not genius-level intelligence, but you got the sense in reading about him that he was smarter than anyone else around him, and it made you nervous whenever he was in a scene.
This is interesting because I partly agree but I never actually saw him as intelligent. He easily is smarter than most of the people he interacted with in the story, which isn't saying much as it includes a deranged Garruk, some children(17 is a child) nearly every adult proves to be smarter than him or at least smart enough not to listen to him. He is almost certainly regularly the most knowledgeable person in a room because he is the one running whatever scheme he's got everyone else wrapped up in and by nature of being a walker who is interested in knowing things he's better learned than plane bound people living on planes set in the dark ages where intelligence was a rare trait. Overall no part of his actions or schemes seem intelligent but they are great in their simplicity. Kidnap the king and trick people into killing him to start a war isn't complex and that makes it easy to get behind rather than the multistep rube goldberg machines that other scheming villains build to prove how smart they are.
It could be that intelligent wasn't the most precise word. It's been a long day.
I read the story in scattered bits here or there, but to me it takes intelligence (tactfulness? street smarts?) to be able to study a foreign society for only a small space of time (a day or so?) and immediately come up with a plan that has a high likelihood of plunging the plane into war and chaos. He took all the info Rowan was vomitting out and knew what levers to pull. To us as readers, and to denizens of Eldraine, those levers might be obvious. But he was a brand new arrival, and quickly came to understand intricate relationships and long-simmering resentments. He also successfully played both sides of the possible conflict through understanding of their cultures and motivations. If it was so easy, one of the elves who wanted war for all these generations would have pulled something similar off, I suspect. But it didn't seem that easy to do, and Oko did it all while appearing perfectly relaxed about it. And all without knowing much about the plane before speaking with Rowan.
Some elves were suspicious of his motives, but not all. The human realms had no idea he even existed at all. Some random interloper almost caused a war. That's not something an individual of average intelligence could pull off. He may not be Bolas level genius, but he almost accomplished something Bolas would probably be impressed by. I can't think of a puppet-master in literature I've read who wasn't smarter than most if not all of the people they were manipulating.
Not saying your view is incorrect. Just supplementing my previous post.
I felt Oko was one of the better villains we've had in quite some time. Makes me want to build a deck around him. The writer protrayed him as far more devious and intelligent than even Bolas in the WAR book. Not genius-level intelligence, but you got the sense in reading about him that he was smarter than anyone else around him, and it made you nervous whenever he was in a scene.
I thought the cauldron scene with Garruk was difficult to understand, and I thought it was a bit easy to liberate him, but I'm happy to see rational Garruk again. Many happy returns!
Overall, the author fleshed out a world and gave me some characters I liked in a limited amount of space. A vast improvement on WAR. And I didn't miss the Gatewatch whatsoever. I'm actually far more interested in Garruk and the Kenrith Twins, and Oko, than any member of the Gatewatch. Like, I am fired up to see the adventures of these walkers.
Even ignoring nostalgia goggles, I vastly prefer the old Urza storyline. I've said it before, but my biggest issue with the whole Gatewatch story is how bland and utterly devoid of ideas it is. It's content to just mimic the popular trend, without contributing anything of substance. The Urza storyline, although far from perfect and with problems of its own, at least tried to be its own thing, to have its own identity, to contribute its own ideas. I've seen the Gatewatch story told a thousand times before, and this incarnation has nothing to set it apart from those that have come before it (and likely those that will come after it).
There's another issue too. It's obviously trying to mimic the comic book superhero trend, that's no secret. They were even introduced as Magic's answer to the Avengers. The problem is that it seems like they're trying to mimic two different eras of comic book superheroes - both the over-the-top cheesy fun of the Saturday morning cartoon, and the more mature and realistic modern day take. And maybe it's possible to mix those things in a way that works, but Magic just isn't doing it well. It takes itself way too seriously - and expects to be taken too seriously - to properly capture the sheer fun of the Saturday morning cartoon, but it's too silly and generic to be worth taking as seriously as the modern take on superheroes.
The Weatherlight saga may not have been perfect, but here we are nearly twenty years later and I still remember it. The mythical "feel" that italofoca mentioned certainly contributes. It felt like something made by fantasy fans, for fantasy fans. The Gatewatch story feels like something made by marketing execs for the mass market.
You do know the weatherlight saga was based on Star Trek as much as the gatewatch is based on the Avengers right?
As someone who's watched a lot of Star Trek (95% TNG), I'm not seeing the parallel. Beyond 'people on a ship,' which could apply to many, many things.
corveroth asked: The Weatherlight Saga was the highest point in Magic's storytelling. It had a continuity without reducing to the Star Trek formula or needing an Avengers team.
A: We literally modeled the Weatherlight Saga when we made it after “Star Trek”. We had a captain, a first mate, an engineer, a security guy, a healer. They travelled in a ship from world to world.
as well as Phyrexia is an expy of the borg and from Karn and the weatherlight we do explore the trope of an AI finding selfhood.
Fair points. Though Maro essentially describes any ship crew (understandable, as Enterprise was a human ship with our standards), and Weatherlight went to only . . . three planes, I think? (Serra, Rath, Mercadia). And the purpose of Weatherlight vs. Enterprise was very different.
But I'm generally picking up what you're putting down. Borg and Phyrexia also good comparison.
Even ignoring nostalgia goggles, I vastly prefer the old Urza storyline. I've said it before, but my biggest issue with the whole Gatewatch story is how bland and utterly devoid of ideas it is. It's content to just mimic the popular trend, without contributing anything of substance. The Urza storyline, although far from perfect and with problems of its own, at least tried to be its own thing, to have its own identity, to contribute its own ideas. I've seen the Gatewatch story told a thousand times before, and this incarnation has nothing to set it apart from those that have come before it (and likely those that will come after it).
There's another issue too. It's obviously trying to mimic the comic book superhero trend, that's no secret. They were even introduced as Magic's answer to the Avengers. The problem is that it seems like they're trying to mimic two different eras of comic book superheroes - both the over-the-top cheesy fun of the Saturday morning cartoon, and the more mature and realistic modern day take. And maybe it's possible to mix those things in a way that works, but Magic just isn't doing it well. It takes itself way too seriously - and expects to be taken too seriously - to properly capture the sheer fun of the Saturday morning cartoon, but it's too silly and generic to be worth taking as seriously as the modern take on superheroes.
The Weatherlight saga may not have been perfect, but here we are nearly twenty years later and I still remember it. The mythical "feel" that italofoca mentioned certainly contributes. It felt like something made by fantasy fans, for fantasy fans. The Gatewatch story feels like something made by marketing execs for the mass market.
You do know the weatherlight saga was based on Star Trek as much as the gatewatch is based on the Avengers right?
As someone who's watched a lot of Star Trek (95% TNG), I'm not seeing the parallel. Beyond 'people on a ship,' which could apply to many, many things.
So am I understanding this correctly that there is no formal reconciliation between liliana and the gatewatch? :/
You understand correctly. If I *remember* correctly, Jace speaks into her mind and tells her to leave, after Bolas is beat, and she takes off.
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This week's story was quite literally a waste of time. It provided no additional background. Nothing substantively new. Just a total waste of time. Can't wrap my head around it.
I was always under the impression that the reason Wizards led with human planeswalkers was that they were popular because people could find pieces of themselves so to speak in these characters. As an example with the new set Ral Zarek is revealed to be in a realtionship to Tomik, appealing to that demographic. Narset has Autism, Gideon shows classic signs of recovery from abuse and tragedy, Huatli is inspired by an area of Latin America. Things like that are why I thought they were more prominent?
Nothing wrong that thouugh I should note that most of the time its White Characters getting all the screen time besides Tarkir. Chandra pre Teferi only human providing diversity to the Gatewatch and if you don't know Chandra suppose to be Indian well can you really tell? I mean did anyone think she was anything but White pre Kaladesh?
Series did a better job with diversity when Urza and Gerrard were steering the franchise quite honestly. Which made Magic stand out honestly cause most Fantasy back in the day was pretty white lol. All downhill since we entered the Gatewatch Era quite frankly.
That's a decent point, the Weatherlight crew (including those who went bad) consisted of (in part) a goblin (Squee), a minotaur (Tahngarth), a cat warrior (Mirri), two people of color (Sisay and Crovax), a maro-sorcerer (Multani) and an artifact golem (Karn). After Tempest and Masques blocks, going into Invasion block, the main crew consisted of three males (Gerrard, Tahngarth, Squee [1 human, 2 non-human]), three females (Sisay, Hanna, Orim [3 human]), and a maro-sorcerer and artifact golem (Multani and Karn).
The Weatherlight crew was arguably the most diverse main cast of characters Wizards had, or has had. And each of the crew had a purpose and a plot.
And they failed. Miserably. They made the most of him in Amonkhet. He was mustache twirlingly over the top, but he was effective. They did a terrible job before that, and they did a terrible job this set. There were flashes where they did well, with him brushing Gideon aside and shattering the blackblade, but overall he just failed and looked like a chump. And while imprisoning him without power is a better punishment, it's really stupid to do, as it leaves him a window to come back. It's also not what they actually did. They imprisoned him without a spark, so he can't planeswalkers and he has less power, but he's still Nicol Bolas Elder Dragon. He still is nigh immortal and graced with magnificent powers. He had basically all his powers before sparking. It's just such a clear case of a story decision being made for meta reasons over what's right for the story. What's right for the story would have been ending the threat he poses to the multiverse. They didn't. And we've already seen lesser beings get their spark back, so Bolas, an immortal genius and one of the most powerful beings in the multiverse, is almost assured to do so narratively, and absolutely going to do so when wizards decides its time.
Did you not finish the novel? Because your comments on his power read like you did t finish but were just told what happened. Bolas is indeed completely without power he couldn't even muster the simplest of healing spells. Should they have killed him? Honestly no and for the exact reason they gave in the novel he died once before and came back killing him with anything less than a soul destroying method would be more pointless than imprisonment.
I'm choosing to believe that he was temporarily weakened from the shock of losing his spark and being depleted after casting the elder spell, because the alternative explanation is stupid. Bolas did not derive his power from his spark, nor did it increase his longevity. The post mending spark only grants the ability to planeswalk, unlike the oldwalker spark. That was the entire point of all of Bolas plans. We see all the other harvested walkers die, and Bolas become severely weakened, so it seems likely that being harvested is a shock to the system that kills most people, but Bolas being an elder dragon let's him live. He will eventually recover. It's possible, of course, that they've decided to retcons the nature of the spark for no reason, but that would be stupid.
And you need to go back and check out why Bolas was able to come back last time. Umezawa tricked him to have an out of body experience and follow him to the meditation realm so he could trap his spirit there by killing his body. Bolas' spirit didn't escape to the meditation realm, his spirit went there to kill Umezawa and this was what allowed Umezawa to kill his body. We have zero evidence that killing Bolas while his spirit is in his body would fail to kill his spirit. All it proves is that if Bolas' spirit is in the meditation realm, you can kill his body and trap him there.
Why is the alternative explination of Ugin seal/stealing his powers stupid? If you meant to stupid idea of it being tied to his spark I can see why you would think its stupid, but as that isn't what was implied at all by the fact that he was stil casting spells after his spark was gone but not after Ugin did whatever he did to him it makes no sense to assume the spark connection.
I can't find the exact source but it seems that Bolas' body was destoryed while he was in the meditation realm and he was defeated in the meditation realm. If this is the case then 100% killing him doesn't work. If not the I still have questions about what exactly happened but in story we saw a dragon survive the destruction of its body and then be reborn. This dragon wasn't even an elder dragon and Ugin strongly hints that as an elder dragon Bolas wouldn't need the same convoluted plots Niv used and could pull it off with completely different convoluted plots. Even flat out saying he could have come back as a Spirit Dragon like Ugin.
If you want to choose to believe something completely outside, or even contradictory to what we are told in lore you need a much better argument than "Doing the thing they said was a bad idea, for reasons, would have been a much better idea than what they actually did."
Umezawa told Bolas he was going to kill him, killed his second in command, said he was going to the meditation realm, and vanished. Bolas, perfectly healthy, separated his own spirit from his body to go to the meditation realm to pursue him. Umezawa had not yet left and took the opportunity to blow up Bolas citadel to kill his body, then went to the meditation realm to kill his spirit. He owns spirit Bolas and thinks he's killed him. He is able to do so because Bolas cannot planeswalk after his body has been killed and his Mana has been severed. Flash forward to Time Spiral and we find out that a trace amount of Bolas Spirit manage to survive because of the Madaran time rift. The growth of the rift enabled his spirit to take on a weak human form. He then used Vensers spark to gain more power, and pulled his sleeping body through the time rift before umezawa kills it in the past. His resurrection relied entirely on the time rift. First, it kept him from being totally destroyed. Second, it's growth enabled him to become more than a harmless shadow of a spirit. Third, it enabled him to retrieve his body from the past. Characters present in this story had knowledge of this (Karn, and especially Teferi).
So we know Ugin is full of *****, because if Bolas' had a way to restore himself he would have done so without having to rely on events outside of his control and every bit as convoluted as Nivs. He didn't even plan the first step, he got lucky that the rift saved enough of his spirit, and then got lucky again that enough plane wrecking disasters happened to cause the time rift crisis and grow the rifts thus causing his spirit to grow. And he'd have certainly done it much, much earlier. The evidence is clear, Ugin is wrong. That's why I said it's stupid. Characters present in this story should know this, Teferi especially as he ******* witnessed it. That's either one of two things, an intentional retcon created solely so that they could have a reason not to kill Bolas (a major retcon for the character btw, that changes fairly recent history), or the author/creative making a huge plot mistake. The former is cynical and the latter is stupid. Neither are good narrative reasons for this happening.
Had they killed Bolas after he desparked, he'd have been dead. Even had he managed to somehow, at the last minute, decouple his spirit from his body and send it to the meditation plane, we would at worst be in the same spot we are now, Bolas trapped on the meditation plane, except he'd just be a spirit instead of alive. If his spirit stayed on Ravnica, Kaya was on hand to finish the job.
They went out of their way to come up with a reason not to kill Bolas, and it doesn't hold up to scrutiny. Maybe Ugin is just lying and is taking a risk solely because he doesn't want to kill his brother, but why anyone would go along with that is a mystery. There is no evidence that Bolas is permanently neutered and will not recover, so this plan relies on Ugin staying on the meditation realm and keeping Bolas weak. What happens when Ugin is inevitably required to leave to face a major threat? Bolas recovers. And Bolas on Alara was a planar threat before he powered up a bit off the maelstrom.
Thank you for the lore breakdown, I've always been unclear on what happened with Bolas there, even though I read the Time Spiral books.
Also, I think we can all agree it's high-time we had a centaur planeswalker.
I may have missed this so apologies if it was already mentioned. I did look and didn't see it though. Does Ilharg appear or do anything in the story? It seemed like a big deal that Ravnica suddenly became a plane with a physically manifesting god...and then we got nothing?
Apologies if I screwed up the spoiler formatting on my phone.
No mention whatsoever of Ilharg. Just did a word search in the ebook. No mention of Ilharg, no mention of boars except by comparison, no mention of 'raze.'
Domri's card (Anarch of Bolas) and the story setup had it appear that Domri was always on Bolas' side. In the story, however, Domri is fighting Eternals until deciding, after witnessing some event, to pledge loyalty to Bolas. He goes over to Bolas, and is promptly harvested. Domri is never an agent of Bolas in the book, witting or unwitting, and there's zero mention of the Raze Boar, which essentially makes all the other backup stuff pointless.
Ye ashiok was from what i readed just to “remember what happened on Theros underworld” and was kinda weird looked alot like the autor was trying to introduce him/her/it/their/anyotherwordyouthinkisnecessaryorcorrectcauseidon’twanttoofendanyoneontheirinterpretationofthecharacter and then forgot to use it, like he checked the ashiok is on the story lets go to another one.
The story is not all bad soo far but it could have been better, probably not the author’s fault he probably had to follow guidelines and had to tell the story he was told to, like “this character needs to do this and that”.
Maybe if the story was more centered on few characters, like the narrator just following those characters and not bothering to do charapters for 36 characters then maybe the ratings of readers would be better.
The biggest fix would be to just give the authors more time. For something of this nature, the culmination of a 10 year arc, wizards really should have known what they wanted 2 years out and given the author that long to write the story.
Yeah, they definitely need to give more time. I still think Wizards had the writer write a long outline with 'walker names blank, because a bunch of the interactions seemed just off.
I also wonder why they went first-person for the story. It's very limiting, especially when we already know X, Y, and Z about Ravnica, but we have to read through characters, new and old, explaining it or experiencing it. I feel a global narrator would have been better, with each chapter describing groups and what they were feeling and experiencing, instead of being trapped/locked into the perspective of one walker at a time. First-person works for some stories. I don't think it was a good choice for a story of this scale, because you don't get a good sense for the scale of the story.
Before reading further, this is a question relating to a significant War of the Spark spoiler (it's kind of spoiled in the cards, but the specifics are not). Don't read further if you haven't read the book.
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Has War of the Spark, officially deemed canon by Wizards, changed the nature of the spark?
A few years ago, I put forth the theory that Bolas would try to suck up planeswalker sparks to repower himself (albeit at the time, I predicted Karn v. Bolas because of the spark transfer stuff on Mirrodin, and because Ugin didn't yet exist in the lore). It led to a lively debate about the nature of the spark. Wizards has addressed the spark over the years as well. They've more or less repeatedly informed us that the spark, after the Mending: 1) no longer makes 'walkers gods, and 'walkers are mortal now; 2) only people with magic abilities can have a spark (forget the source, but I remember reading that); 3) the spark only serves to protect a 'walker as they planeswalk, and no longer gives them increased power.
War of the Spark had 'walkers being harvested. Their sparks were pulled out, and they shriveled and died while Bolas absorbed the spark into his gem, making him more powerful with each one.
I'll quote from the ending here, after Bolas is brought to the Meditation plane by Ugin:
'He felt like something was missing, too. His Spark, of course, but something else, as well.'
'“I don’t think so, brother. Look at yourself, weighed down by mortality. You don’t have the power to kill me in a few minutes or a few millennia. And you no longer have the life span to hold out beyond that. You no longer have your Spark.”'
'You have plenty of time. Not eternity, of course. Not anymore.'
'He automatically summoned a healing spell to correct this minor annoyance. No magic came. The shoulder continued to ache, but his lack of power was the greater injury. He struggled to suppress a tantrum.'
'Still in denial, the mortal dragon roared, “No prison can hold the mighty…” He trailed off, confused. He knew his names. The one he had hatched with and the one he had given himself. It wasn’t that he couldn’t say them—It’s that your names no longer belong to you, thought the Spirit Dragon to his dragon brother. Neither of them. You’ve forfeited any right to your true name and lost the power inherent in your chosen one. You are nameless. Nothing. “No!” YES. To make his ultimate point, the Spirit Dragon straightened to his full height and beyond. He seemed to fill the realm and his brother’s consciousness all at once. The mortal dragon winced and found himself…cowering. Know this, brother. I am your jailer for what remains of your mortality and will make quite sure you never escape. Your schemes, your machinations…all your little dramas are at an end. The curtain has fallen.'
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Okay, so let me break down what I see here. Bolas is without his spark, without his magic, and eventually, without his names, and Ugin is suggesting Bolas won't be living as long as he otherwise would have. We don't know what Ugin did during his invisible fight with Bolas, nor what he did to Bolas on the Meditation plane.
What we know from the book: Being harvested killed every walker except for Bolas, who not only had all the harvested sparks pulled out by an eternalized god, but also his own personal spark yanked out. Yet, he didn't die. This suggests to me Elder Dragons are made from tougher stuff.
However, this is the first time that we see someone lose their magic along with their spark. Teferi gave up his spark but could still perform magic. Karn lost his spark, but was still capable, one assumes, of magic. Ob Nixilis lost his spark, but reignited it. Before he did so, he still had access to magic. I'm trying to think of who else lost a spark since the Mending time. The Keldon/elf girl? If so, she could still do magic.
Anyway, absent Ugin somehow snatching away Bolas' magic without telling us, the readers, how or when, I'm left to assume Bolas lost his magic when he lost his spark. This doesn't make sense to me, as he was a supremely powerful Elder Dragon before he was ever a walker. He was also powerful as a post-Mending walker. I don't see how he would lose his magic with his spark.
There's also a faint suggestion that Bolas will not be long-lived after losing his spark. Was he not going to be long-lived before the events of War of the Spark? As far as I knew, Elder Dragons can last a good long while. Teferi seemed to age 'normally.' Nixilis was a demon so didn't really age, and Karn was an artifact dude. If Bolas was a long-lived Elder Dragon before War of the Spark, shouldn't he remain so after?
Then it appears Bolas also loses his identity for some unknown reason. I'm leaning toward this being Ugin's doing, but I'm not so sure.
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So all this being said, has the nature of the spark changed? Is it now not only reliant on your magic, but the source of your magic? Is it now more than just protection in the Blind Eternities? Does it have an impact on your power and your aging/mortality? If so, this seems a significant change. If accumulated sparks lead to god-like power, then the sparks seem to be more than what they used to be. And yet their fundamental nature also seems to be changed.
I realize this may not be as important for future sets and blocks, but the book is canon, and I'd like to be clear on what the new rules are.
- So, nothing biological can pass through the Planar Bridge . . . except for planeswalkers. What? This was another point they hammered ever since the Planar Bridge was made. Yet, in this story, Ob Nixilis, Dack, Karn, and Samut just walk/fly through the portal into Amonkhet. The explanation is that their sparks somehow protect them.
Didn't the Planar Bridge destroy organic matter due to sending it through the Blind Eternities, from which effects the spark specifically protects? Not that it makes the whole book any better, but still.
I don't remember 100% the method behind the portal. I think when it was first being developed, it might have transported a vase, but not the flower, on the same plane. Then Tezz saw the possibility of using it between planes. Was it the energy of the portal surface itself that destroyed organic matter, or the Blind Eternities? It has to interact in some way with the BE, but the portal is instant transfer from one plane to another.
Bolas was cooked and injured by being transported by Ugin to the Meditation plane after he was desparked. Apparently it might have taken months to heal. But this, too, was usually impossible. They removed his Magic and his long life along with his spark, so why he would still survive the BE more or less intact, I don't know. It's canon, though.
Can anyone confirm for me what happened to Dovin Baan, and whether Kaya can now planeswalk with non-walkers?
I saw it mentioned in the original synopsis, but it seemed to have limited info. I don't know if Dovin is dead-dead, or 'dead . . . . ?
Thanks in advance.
"That bad, huh?" - Han Solo
It could be that intelligent wasn't the most precise word. It's been a long day.
I read the story in scattered bits here or there, but to me it takes intelligence (tactfulness? street smarts?) to be able to study a foreign society for only a small space of time (a day or so?) and immediately come up with a plan that has a high likelihood of plunging the plane into war and chaos. He took all the info Rowan was vomitting out and knew what levers to pull. To us as readers, and to denizens of Eldraine, those levers might be obvious. But he was a brand new arrival, and quickly came to understand intricate relationships and long-simmering resentments. He also successfully played both sides of the possible conflict through understanding of their cultures and motivations. If it was so easy, one of the elves who wanted war for all these generations would have pulled something similar off, I suspect. But it didn't seem that easy to do, and Oko did it all while appearing perfectly relaxed about it. And all without knowing much about the plane before speaking with Rowan.
Some elves were suspicious of his motives, but not all. The human realms had no idea he even existed at all. Some random interloper almost caused a war. That's not something an individual of average intelligence could pull off. He may not be Bolas level genius, but he almost accomplished something Bolas would probably be impressed by. I can't think of a puppet-master in literature I've read who wasn't smarter than most if not all of the people they were manipulating.
Not saying your view is incorrect. Just supplementing my previous post.
I thought the cauldron scene with Garruk was difficult to understand, and I thought it was a bit easy to liberate him, but I'm happy to see rational Garruk again. Many happy returns!
Overall, the author fleshed out a world and gave me some characters I liked in a limited amount of space. A vast improvement on WAR. And I didn't miss the Gatewatch whatsoever. I'm actually far more interested in Garruk and the Kenrith Twins, and Oko, than any member of the Gatewatch. Like, I am fired up to see the adventures of these walkers.
I am content with the money I paid.
Fair points. Though Maro essentially describes any ship crew (understandable, as Enterprise was a human ship with our standards), and Weatherlight went to only . . . three planes, I think? (Serra, Rath, Mercadia). And the purpose of Weatherlight vs. Enterprise was very different.
But I'm generally picking up what you're putting down. Borg and Phyrexia also good comparison.
As someone who's watched a lot of Star Trek (95% TNG), I'm not seeing the parallel. Beyond 'people on a ship,' which could apply to many, many things.
You understand correctly. If I *remember* correctly, Jace speaks into her mind and tells her to leave, after Bolas is beat, and she takes off.
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This week's story was quite literally a waste of time. It provided no additional background. Nothing substantively new. Just a total waste of time. Can't wrap my head around it.
That's a decent point, the Weatherlight crew (including those who went bad) consisted of (in part) a goblin (Squee), a minotaur (Tahngarth), a cat warrior (Mirri), two people of color (Sisay and Crovax), a maro-sorcerer (Multani) and an artifact golem (Karn). After Tempest and Masques blocks, going into Invasion block, the main crew consisted of three males (Gerrard, Tahngarth, Squee [1 human, 2 non-human]), three females (Sisay, Hanna, Orim [3 human]), and a maro-sorcerer and artifact golem (Multani and Karn).
The Weatherlight crew was arguably the most diverse main cast of characters Wizards had, or has had. And each of the crew had a purpose and a plot.
But still. Let's get a centaur planeswalker.
Thank you for the lore breakdown, I've always been unclear on what happened with Bolas there, even though I read the Time Spiral books.
Also, I think we can all agree it's high-time we had a centaur planeswalker.
But we finally got a viashino walker in War of the Spark!
And then it was promptly killed.
Apologies if I screwed up the spoiler formatting on my phone.
No mention whatsoever of Ilharg. Just did a word search in the ebook. No mention of Ilharg, no mention of boars except by comparison, no mention of 'raze.'
Domri's card (Anarch of Bolas) and the story setup had it appear that Domri was always on Bolas' side. In the story, however, Domri is fighting Eternals until deciding, after witnessing some event, to pledge loyalty to Bolas. He goes over to Bolas, and is promptly harvested. Domri is never an agent of Bolas in the book, witting or unwitting, and there's zero mention of the Raze Boar, which essentially makes all the other backup stuff pointless.
The whole book is like this.
Yeah, they definitely need to give more time. I still think Wizards had the writer write a long outline with 'walker names blank, because a bunch of the interactions seemed just off.
I also wonder why they went first-person for the story. It's very limiting, especially when we already know X, Y, and Z about Ravnica, but we have to read through characters, new and old, explaining it or experiencing it. I feel a global narrator would have been better, with each chapter describing groups and what they were feeling and experiencing, instead of being trapped/locked into the perspective of one walker at a time. First-person works for some stories. I don't think it was a good choice for a story of this scale, because you don't get a good sense for the scale of the story.
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Has War of the Spark, officially deemed canon by Wizards, changed the nature of the spark?
A few years ago, I put forth the theory that Bolas would try to suck up planeswalker sparks to repower himself (albeit at the time, I predicted Karn v. Bolas because of the spark transfer stuff on Mirrodin, and because Ugin didn't yet exist in the lore). It led to a lively debate about the nature of the spark. Wizards has addressed the spark over the years as well. They've more or less repeatedly informed us that the spark, after the Mending: 1) no longer makes 'walkers gods, and 'walkers are mortal now; 2) only people with magic abilities can have a spark (forget the source, but I remember reading that); 3) the spark only serves to protect a 'walker as they planeswalk, and no longer gives them increased power.
War of the Spark had 'walkers being harvested. Their sparks were pulled out, and they shriveled and died while Bolas absorbed the spark into his gem, making him more powerful with each one.
I'll quote from the ending here, after Bolas is brought to the Meditation plane by Ugin:
'He felt like something was missing, too. His Spark, of course, but something else, as well.'
'“I don’t think so, brother. Look at yourself, weighed down by mortality. You don’t have the power to kill me in a few minutes or a few millennia. And you no longer have the life span to hold out beyond that. You no longer have your Spark.”'
'You have plenty of time. Not eternity, of course. Not anymore.'
'He automatically summoned a healing spell to correct this minor annoyance. No magic came. The shoulder continued to ache, but his lack of power was the greater injury. He struggled to suppress a tantrum.'
'Still in denial, the mortal dragon roared, “No prison can hold the mighty…” He trailed off, confused. He knew his names. The one he had hatched with and the one he had given himself. It wasn’t that he couldn’t say them—It’s that your names no longer belong to you, thought the Spirit Dragon to his dragon brother. Neither of them. You’ve forfeited any right to your true name and lost the power inherent in your chosen one. You are nameless. Nothing. “No!” YES. To make his ultimate point, the Spirit Dragon straightened to his full height and beyond. He seemed to fill the realm and his brother’s consciousness all at once. The mortal dragon winced and found himself…cowering. Know this, brother. I am your jailer for what remains of your mortality and will make quite sure you never escape. Your schemes, your machinations…all your little dramas are at an end. The curtain has fallen.'
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Okay, so let me break down what I see here. Bolas is without his spark, without his magic, and eventually, without his names, and Ugin is suggesting Bolas won't be living as long as he otherwise would have. We don't know what Ugin did during his invisible fight with Bolas, nor what he did to Bolas on the Meditation plane.
What we know from the book: Being harvested killed every walker except for Bolas, who not only had all the harvested sparks pulled out by an eternalized god, but also his own personal spark yanked out. Yet, he didn't die. This suggests to me Elder Dragons are made from tougher stuff.
However, this is the first time that we see someone lose their magic along with their spark. Teferi gave up his spark but could still perform magic. Karn lost his spark, but was still capable, one assumes, of magic. Ob Nixilis lost his spark, but reignited it. Before he did so, he still had access to magic. I'm trying to think of who else lost a spark since the Mending time. The Keldon/elf girl? If so, she could still do magic.
Anyway, absent Ugin somehow snatching away Bolas' magic without telling us, the readers, how or when, I'm left to assume Bolas lost his magic when he lost his spark. This doesn't make sense to me, as he was a supremely powerful Elder Dragon before he was ever a walker. He was also powerful as a post-Mending walker. I don't see how he would lose his magic with his spark.
There's also a faint suggestion that Bolas will not be long-lived after losing his spark. Was he not going to be long-lived before the events of War of the Spark? As far as I knew, Elder Dragons can last a good long while. Teferi seemed to age 'normally.' Nixilis was a demon so didn't really age, and Karn was an artifact dude. If Bolas was a long-lived Elder Dragon before War of the Spark, shouldn't he remain so after?
Then it appears Bolas also loses his identity for some unknown reason. I'm leaning toward this being Ugin's doing, but I'm not so sure.
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So all this being said, has the nature of the spark changed? Is it now not only reliant on your magic, but the source of your magic? Is it now more than just protection in the Blind Eternities? Does it have an impact on your power and your aging/mortality? If so, this seems a significant change. If accumulated sparks lead to god-like power, then the sparks seem to be more than what they used to be. And yet their fundamental nature also seems to be changed.
I realize this may not be as important for future sets and blocks, but the book is canon, and I'd like to be clear on what the new rules are.
I don't remember 100% the method behind the portal. I think when it was first being developed, it might have transported a vase, but not the flower, on the same plane. Then Tezz saw the possibility of using it between planes. Was it the energy of the portal surface itself that destroyed organic matter, or the Blind Eternities? It has to interact in some way with the BE, but the portal is instant transfer from one plane to another.
Bolas was cooked and injured by being transported by Ugin to the Meditation plane after he was desparked. Apparently it might have taken months to heal. But this, too, was usually impossible. They removed his Magic and his long life along with his spark, so why he would still survive the BE more or less intact, I don't know. It's canon, though.