Welcome, oh friends, to this WOEful tale of fantasy, knights, fae and witches. The Wilds of Eldraine story begins now!

Spoiler: WOE EP1: Will and Rowan's incredibly terrible couple of months, special guest staring the actual protagonist
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Episode 1: Pure of Heart

We open with Rowan and Will, meeting with a former Emberath knight turned bandit queen, Imodane. In the months after the end of the Phyrexian invasion, Will has become the Boy King, High King (acting) of Eldraine's courts... courts that are barely standing, given Emberath and Lochtwain are both gone, Ardenvale castle is a ruined mess, and Vantress is seemingly the only one still functioning in any real capacity. Will wants to unite the people, Rowan wants to fight people who are threatening townsfolk instead of forging alliances, and both are pretty traumatized by everything- though we only get Rowan's perspective on this so far, with her VERY clearly suffering from severe PTSD.

Will offers to duel Imodane for an exchange of loyalty, hoping to prove he isn't a pathetic little boy (he's like 20ish at best and Imodane's hammer is larger than he is). The fight immediately goes sour, and Rowan has a PTSD encouraged break down, something far more than lightning coming forth from within her- my guess is, her rage and sorrow is fueling the witch-blood within her, and without her spark in the way it's flowing freely now. She lashes out to help Will... and cleaves a ****ing mountain in two. This works at scaring off Imoden (who goes on to have an encounter with Lord Talion that probably spells her death, rip to a real one), and only makes the blood worse between these two twins.

Back at the castle Rowan insists that they should just leave Eldraine. Strixhaven taught them to find magic solutions to stuff, lets go **** off to another plane and find some magic solutions! Will is insistant that as the High King he can't leave, and that the allies they DO have are starting to doubt him because instead of fighting honourably his sister, I cannot state this enough, CLEAVED A MOUNTAIN IN TWO. Rowan is frustrated, tries to planeswalk- and in focusing, has a flashback to their parents dying. Notably, she calls Linden her step-mother, despite the fact that their actual birth mother was intending to eat them and Linden is far more respectable a mom and had taken care of her since birth basically. More witch blood problems, perhaps? Anyway, when the trauma flash leaves she realizes that the spark she and her brother shared is gone, and just walks the **** out.

... meanwhile, the actual hero of the story, Kellan, is having his own adventures on the edge of Eldraine's Realm. He's half fey (according to his mom) and bullied constantly by ****ty kids who drop cold iron nails and yew shavings on him, figuring it'll mess him up. It does, for the normal reasons of "dumping a bucket of nails on a person will hurt them". His parents (a step dad and his birth mother) love him very much though, and insist that he shouldn't listen to bullies or the feeling in his head that says that the woods are were he belongs. Then, during one of his New Moon trips to an old oak tree to hear stories from his mom, he encounters a gate leading to Lord Talion's palace, and they ask if Kellan is pure of heart (well, true of heart. There's some stuff I'll get into after this recap...). Kellan isn't sure, but he'd like to be, and after some fae based conversations and deal making, Kellan decides to perform the task Talion has for him.

Three witches must be slain, for they are the ones who afflicted Eldraine with The Wicked Slumber. Do this and be rewarded. Pretty basic, but likely far more complicated in the doing. Good luck Kellan!


And that's the story! Thoughts time;
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overall a pretty solid beginning to this story. I love the framing of Rowan's ptsd, I love how the consequences of Phyrexia's invasion are very visible. I like Kellan, he's a good kid!

There's some issues though. Namely... there's some minor formatting issues through the story. Like, two lines are missing one word each and that's Weird. Also, the fae lord that meets Imodane is definitely intended to be Talion, but asks if she's "pure of heart", like the story is called. But Talion asks Kellan if he's "true of heart" which is, not what the story is called. There's also mention of Will having a black eye from the fight with Imodane, when she never even struck him- she swung and he barely avoided it, but that was the entire exchange. Maybe during the fight with her men once she went running caused it, but that feels inconsistent with how it is written. It's just a minor bit of faltering in an otherwise great story.

Gonna compliment sandwhich this- the reveal of how Rowan used lightning to cleave a mountain in two ****ing ruled. The turns of phrase that K.A. Rivera uses are stylish, and she really knows how to make this feel like a (somewhat warped) fairy tale. It's a good showing all around, and I'm excited for the next chapter! Also, yay for the nonbinary fey lord.