I’ve been absent for a while, doing my best to fight the coup in my country (Brazil) and protest against it, but the battle was officially lost today. I’ll still dedicate my time to politics (not in this blog, obviously) but today I return to vorthosian matters as they provide me with a reliable way to escape, even if it’s only for a few hours, the surreal turmoil of lies and injustice that took our lives by assault.
Animated version of Tyler Jacobson’s Avacyn (SOI trailer)
Written by Nik Davidson, Stories and Endings takes place in Thraben’s Cathedral and features the first encounter by Tamiyo and Jace followed by the appearance of Avacyn, who’s determined to destroy them. Please read it first, then we may discuss what caught our attentions. In my case, I would highlight the following…
We knew a lot more about Tamiyo’s personality. She avoids contact in Innistrad, and she does it not only because of the dangers that awaits at every corner, but as someone who refuses to attach to its objects of study. She went to the cathedral after the stories about Avacyn, and she will probably leave the plane after she solves the mystery of the Eldritch Moon.
Magic Story is trying to show us how different mages and planeswalkers cast spells. Sorin sings, Gisa whistles, and now we know Tamiyo draws her power from her studies and stories, by recollecting anecdotes, myths and legends and drawing her spells from their narrative core (from “the music of the stories”).
Art by Mark Tedin
The first story comes from Kamigawa and shows us how a goblin was able to deceive a demon to steal his treasures. Under a rock, the goblin invaded the demon’s lair three times, but was soon unmasked when she tried to lie in order to spare her own village from his wrath. Tamiyo used this story to cloak herself from the cathedral guards, but is it possible that this story is also a metaphor for what’s happening in SOI? I’m still not sure.
I may be exaggerating, but I think they sneaked a Catalog reference here:
The central library was just ahead. She started mentally cataloguing the stories she brought with her, trying to determine how best to deal with the locks that would likely be up ahead, when she noticed something amiss.
Art by John Matson
The second story involved the Myr and their myth of origin, but it also implied that Tamiyo knows Mirrodin (more on this later). It was used to calm Jace down and restore his sanity.
Jace suggests he may call the Gatewatch to help Innistrad, but Tamiyo’s Ugin-like wisdom regards the plane’s destruction as natural as any other plane’s “death” and despite the archangel’s madness (probably caused by Nahiri and spread to other angels with the help of the cryptolith’s leylines) Tamiyo still thinks it would be dangerous to destroy her, as she wards the plane from outer threats.
The telepath then convinces her by offering help to approach Avacyn in her current state as a way to solve the current puzzle, and both agree to connect their minds to know each other, something that would also help keeping Jace sane in the process. Tamiyo also offers to share her research with the Gatewatch (and offers the sharpest definition I ever seen of what a hero is).
“I have helped you, Jace. I will offer a compromise. I will share my research with you, and you and your friends can use that information to help avert similar disasters on other planes, if it suits you. But I have recorded ten thousand stories about heroes, and a hero is merely a disaster with a point of view.”
Jace accesses Tamiyo’s knowledge of other planes, something that may be important to connect the Gatewatch to future storylines (he already knew Kamigawa, but now we’re sure he knows about Mirrodin, a cold plane - possibly Ice Age Dominaria and not Kaldheim, and Serra’s Realm). This way, Jace knows about post-Memnarch Mirrodin and about the original Phyrexians that tainted the white mana artificial plane created by Serra, and this may help him understand what New Phyrexia is when the time comes.
He also got to know about the three mysterious iron-bound scrolls Tamiyo carries around. She made the promise to never use them, but they impressed Jace as powerful spells.
Art by Wayne Reynolds
Avacyn appears and identified both planeswalkers as targets. To attack her with an icy blast, Tamiyo reminds herself of an old song from a world covered in ice (Dominaria’s past?), and nothing and no one will ever convince me that the song’s theme is not about Marit Lage’s release.
She called with terror’s breath from mountain door, The truest cold had risen from the sea. Only his howl of anguish echoed more.
Avacyn went on being creepy when Jace paralysed her for a moment. He knows she’s holding something out of the plane (Emrakul?), and want to use his already fragile mind to take a peek at it, when Tamiyo convinces him that’s enough. He seems to have noticed something terrible, but Avacyn prepared to roast them in her light before he named what he seems to have found.
“Jace, that’s enough.” “Wait. No. That’s…”
Jace knows what Tamiyo knows, and he reminds her of a scroll with a fitting story that could be used to stop Avacyn.
Tamiyo. The scroll. The iron scroll. You showed it to me. An old story. A powerful story. The survivors of a place that was lost…Serra’s realm. That cataclysm, that power…the story fits. You know it does. You can stop this.
Art by Michael Sutfin
Okay… What story is there from Serra’s Realm to fit this moment? Could it be the story of Radiant? Probably. Serra created her artificial plane as a monumental and utopian world of pure white mana. It’s angels were created to defend it. When Urza fled Phyrexia, he planeswalked there to heal and spent five years in the process, but Phyrexia tracked him and invaded the plane, corrupting it (including some of it’s angels - by the way, Selesnia was a Serra Angel before Phyrexia corrupted her). Urza went to Dominaria and Serra was so frustrated seeing her masterpiece tainted (see Befoul) that she abandoned it and put the Archangel Radiant in charge of protecting it, but she was suddenly contaminated as well (without even noticing it) and became paranoid, using angels to destroy the humans of the plane since they “could be” Phyrexian sleeper agents. If we look at old spells to stop a corrupted angel using other angels to smite mankind, we would find Humble.
The problem is that Tamiyo swore to left the iron-bound scrolls intact, and she is ready to die to keep her promise, to Jace’s despair. If only a millennia old planeswalker dropped from the dome to help them…
FromMagic Duels: Shadows over Innistrad
The story of Serra’s Realm doesn’t end here.
Urza finally came back to Serra Realm’s, hoping to use its mana as fuel to the Weatherlight since the plane was dying anyway. After evacuating all the remaining residents except Radiant and her followers who didn’t want to leave, he collapsed the plane inside the Weatherlight’s powerstone, giving it the ability to travel trough planes without a planeswalker.
You can see this event depicted in Planar Collapse from Urza’s Legacy.
Thanks for the addition! Yes, that’s how things went on (I just tried to focus on the parallel between Avacyn and Radiant).
There’s also the battle between Radiant and Urza, where she took the crystals out from the orbits of his skull and almost killed him, but ended up destroying herself and healing him when she decided to combine the crystals (unleashing a violent burst).
