Magic: The Gathering Thread XXV: 3 Vorthoses barely clinging to sanity and 45 Spikes

[enderlord99]

Spoiler: Bloomburrow first-look content

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I can't tell if Lutri went through an omenpath or Ral somehow turned into an otter, but one of those things definitely happened.

[LaZodiac]

Spoiler: Bloomburrow first-look content

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I can't tell if Lutri went through an omenpath or Ral somehow turned into an otter, but one of those things definitely happened.

Spoiler

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It is that Planeswalkers (and presumably other folk through omenpaths) turn into animal people when on the plane.

[enderlord99]

Spoiler

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It is that Planeswalkers (and presumably other folk through omenpaths) turn into animal people when on the plane.

So, the second one. Got it.

[tonberrian]

God I love spawning multiple tokens when I have multiple Warleader's Calls up. Yes I would like to ping you 6 times after blowing up my own blood token with Gleeful Demolition.

[Spore]

So, the second one. Got it.

Spoiler: Bloomburrow

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The art piece is even called "Ral, Crackling Wit, which is probably the resulting card name

[LaZodiac]

Okay! I rise from the depths of my tomb once more to bring you concentrated Vorthos knowledge and understanding, for those who wish to listen.

I'm going to try and summarize this in a way that won't involve me writing ten thousand words...

Ixalan 2: Subterranean Boogaloo

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Truthfully too much stuff happens in this for me to recap this in a complete and total manner in a way that satisfies me and doesn't take literally all day to organize, so here are the highlights;

Sun Empire is led by a toddler, controlled by his evil uncle and his not evil auntie. Hautli, Saheeli, Elendra of the Black Rose, and Admiral Governer Brass are planning a united coup against the corruptive forces of stupidity and racism in order to keep the plane from being set on fire by constant war and death. Saheeli is making robot dinosaurs and the pirates want to make a permanent nation out of their floating flotilla city and Elendra wants her vampires to stop being so ****ing corrupt. The people in the center of the earth relate to that on Huatli's end.

There's a gravemind down in the depths of the earth, an ancient mind controlling fungus nasty man who isn't a threat Yet but Will Be.

Vito and a large faction of vampires have fully devoted themselves to the great bat god Aclazotz, and end up getting killed real good. Kellan helps, and acquires an archeologist vampire girlfriend(?) to accompany him on his journies. None of the other stories involving Kellan will feature her because of how Magic's story turn-around is oops.

Ravnica Murder Mystery Hours

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Extremely good story! The mystery is very good, and up until the last moment I couldn't quite figure out who was responsible... though I did figure it out, in the end. I wish I'd been in a right mental state to go over these stories live so we could have fun figuring it out ourselves, and for that I'm sorry.

Highlights include: Kaya being the best. Detective Proft being the worst (affectionate). Teysa being the worst and a ton of people in and out of universe being weirdly on board for her stated goal of destabilizing the plane by gutting the Selesnyan conclave or killing one-third of Trostani (being horny for mean girlr makes people brain-poisoned). Aurelia continues to be a psychopath who is barely constrained. The Gruul continue to do nothing wrong or really all that relevant to the plot (though the growing sense that their old gods are returning as the plane slowly gets ripped to pieces by constant warfare is FASCINATING. Seeing what Ravnica was before Azor ****ed it all up is cool to me). Etrata's working relationshp with Proft (and being a main character!) is really cool for me personally, even if I'm baffled by the idea people find this to be romantic a relationship... but then people also saw Aurelia chaining Massacre Girl up was also romantic so maybe I'm just disconnected from the weirdos enough that I don't fit in anymore. Krenko continues to be a wonderful little monster of a man. The tease of some mysteriorus thopter using figure breaking into Proft's mind palace is... fascinating.

All in all, strongly recommend you read this one! It's lengthy, as a murder mystery should be, but all in all fantastic. The conclusion; especially Oba's villain speech at the end where she reveals she's been murdering people for MONTHS and it's only because she finally hit someone guilded that any of the players in this play CARED is ****ing incredible. I think we're gonna get that Guildless Revolt set one day and it's gonna be sooner rather than later, and probably backed by the Gruul Old Gods because sure the Gruul are a GUILD but they're not really a guild, you know? It'll be interesting to see how that goes on top of Niv-Mizzet's desire to turn Ravnica into Sigil, the City of Doors from Planescape.

Anyway if people are curious here is the status of who is dead or indisposed at the end of this murder mystery, which is (arguably) the most relevant.

Death Count
Zegana
Teysa (comes back as a spirit, this is expected)
Kylox (introduced this block)
Tolsimir, maybe also his dog
Judith (implied, but I don't think a person named Massacre Girl isn't going to NOT kill someone...)

Indisposed
Anzrag (pokeball'd by the detectives)
Agrus Kos (Judith trapped him in a crystal skull. Massacre Girl has it probably. I have suspicions on where this will go...)
Rakdos (Sleeping, though in the time between this story and the next he has just ****ing left Ravnica to become a cowboy)
Oba, one third of Trostani (arrested for extreme murder crimes. Teysa is intending for her to die or for Selesnya to be gutted of everything they own)

... wait? I'm missing something? What do you m- oh right Kellan. The protagonist. Kellan the main character of the last couple sets! That Kellan! He's an apprentice in the guildless detective agency. His archeologist friend is doing Gruul ruin archeology in the background, added to Seanan McGuire's story post fact because while she's an important character, she's not important enough to be known by the author writing this or Thunder Junction's story because how Magic does its story is weird. He learns how to fly! Good for him.

Finally, this brings us to THUNDER JUNCTION, whose first story released yesterday! Lets go over that one in a finer detail like I usually... wait what tdo you mean this story's actually really light on details. Dangit!

OUTLAWS OF THUNDER JUNCTION

Spoiler: OUTLAWS, Episode 1: An Offer of Revenge

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Like a coin spining in the air after being flipped, this story is more set up then pay off. Whether it'll land hands, tails, edge, or get shot to pieces on the way down remains to be seen, but lets actually look at what we DO get from this...

First, AKUL. A dragon of Thunder Junction- the art of which shows him to be a horrific scorpion dragon man who breathes fire out of his claws and has a delightful little bandana- is hunting after the "last key" he needs, him and his Hellspurs raiding the carriage that has it. Only, as the poor life slips from the courier, we learn that it is simply lumps of coal. Akul has been tricked, and the key is off to somewhere else... the key was also something delivered to this guy from off plane, so that's interesting.

Later, Annie Flash finds the remains of this carriage. Being a former criminal turned accidental white-hat, she of courser helps herself to whatever WASN'T taken from the carriage to help out in the town she's inadvertently dug roots into. We also learn her mount is a magic horse- a beast of a mare called Fortune. Fortune comes and goes, but in a pinch she's always there for ol' Annie, and immediately if you have any love of westerns you will FEEL the essence of the genre in lines like that, which I hope show up more as we go on. It's incredible and I love it. Sadly her day is interrupted by everyone's least favorite **** boy, Oko- he has a job, and her unique abilities makes her perfect for it. Primarily that golden eye of hers. Rumor says an angel gave it to her, and it lets her see through illusions. A fact she makes clear when she tells the fae bastard to **** off, noting he is a fae which means fae are just a thing on this plane.

Oko leaves, but not before making it clear where his hideout is, and Totally Not Threatening her that if he can easily find her... the Hellspurs sure as hell can too. Annie doesn't want to live backwards, doesn't need revenge to have a good life, but Oko's target is Akul and this would be an opportunity to take the monster down. Oko's a **** but Akul's a classic ruinous typhoon of existence, so it's pretty clear where her coin is going to land, but how she calls it... well, we'll see where this goes. Oko is a terrible person and what we know from card previews is that his gang includes Rakdos, the Lord of Murder, and something tells me he won't play soft in a way Annie may prefer...

Meanwhile: Ral Zarek is spearheading the organization and creation of an Izzet run interplanar telephone line, through more permanent omenpaths, so as to properly set Ravnica as the seat of the new multiverse. This also has extremely strong western vibes, and positions Ral as the fancy pants European man who has come to these wild frontiers to present a little bit of class to the joint... which is hilarious given Ravnica is slavic in aesthetic so it's less "foppish british gentlemen" and more "coffee fueled have insane slav shouting about electricity". Incredible work, this plan will go extremely well.

Kellan is also here. He heard from Ezrim, the Archon leader of the Guildless detective agency from Ravnica, that his father Oko is likely to be here. He really wants to see his dad- he's heard nothing but terrible things about his dad- but Oko is his DAD and Kellan is his SON that has to mean something? It HAS to mean something? Right? Right???

I feel so ****ing sad for Kellan. Like Annie, I don't really see his coin landing any other way. I look forward to the impact it makes when it hits this plane hard enough to crater it.