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272: We're going BACK! to the Future Sight
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast!
Take a step back 19 yearsish into the past to discuss Future Sight with Melthos Alex!
https://multiverseinreview.blogspot.com/2022/03/time-spiral.html
We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources including how to join our Discord
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As promised, we keep Mental Health Links available every episode. But For general Mental Health the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) has great resources for people struggling with mental health concerns as well as their families. We also want to draw attention to this article on stigma from NAMI's site.
If you’re thinking about suicide or just need someone to talk to right now, you can get support from any of the resources below.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988
- Veteran's can Press 1 at anytime to be taken to the Veteran's Line
- Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741-741
- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
- IMAlive: Click Chat Now to access a live online network of volunteers through instant messaging.
- TrevorLifeline, TrevorChat, and TrevorText (LGBTQ+ crisis support): 1-866-488-7386, or text “Trevor” to 1-202-304-1200
- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore Podcast. I am going to get introductions out of the way quick, because this week it is like like last episode, just me. So I am Alex, not really found on social media, but found on the Goblin Lore Discord. And my pronouns are he, him.
00:00:51
Speaker
And ah we are
Time Spiral Series Continuation
00:00:53
Speaker
continuing. our i this week, I will say and Hobbs are taking the week off. I am going to finish off the little series we started a ah few weeks ago, um talking about the story of the Time Spiral blog.
00:01:08
Speaker
So this is, if if you're you're new, I would encourage you to go listen to those last episodes as a quick recap. um we are kind of going through some some older stories, some older sets um in lieu of Magic having more active story now. And and also with the holidays, the end of year, we've got in the US here, we have Thanksgiving coming up. I suspect this will probably be posted after that. And then, of course, we run into December with all sorts of things going on in December leading up into New Year's, into January, um all of which take time away and...
00:01:43
Speaker
Thus, we are going to be inconsistent for the next month or or so, i would I would guess. Just as as we have things going on in our real life, we'll be kind of prioritizing some of that, trying to get back and record some episodes here and there, but we are going to be taking care of some other things first.
00:02:03
Speaker
And... Even the last few couple months, there's been a
Revisiting Old Magic Sets
00:02:08
Speaker
lot going on. And so it's been nice to, in lieu of Magic Story, which is, well, there's a lot of other topics and stuff we talk about here, but Magic Story is ah is a good topic that fits right into our wheelhouse that gives us some sort of pre-built thing that we can talk around, build an episode around and a conversation around. But...
00:02:26
Speaker
Magic hasn't had a lot of new stories lately and is likely not to going into next year. And so we started going back to some old sets. We talked to the invasions story, which was a lot of fun. ta And I did that fairly recently. If you go back a few episodes, invasion block, um one of the more important things. bits of the game for me just for that was ah kind of a prime time for me to be playing. i had started earlier than that. I started back in revised, which is one of the reasons why time spiral block is so important too.
00:02:58
Speaker
But ah that was fun. And now we're talking time spiral. This is this is probably my favorite block just in general. um I love all the little references and nods and things. So I'm going walk through the story, the final set, the third set of this block back then. It was was always three set blocks.
00:03:15
Speaker
I'd also ah at some point I think we're gonna we're gonna try to go through and do kind of a card review only not from a what's like good index standpoint, and more of a you know what has cool flavor what is cool mechanics what what kind of melds those well like we do for our
Significant Story Developments in Future Sight
00:03:32
Speaker
sets.
00:03:33
Speaker
but we'll We'll see when we get to that. But so for this set, Future Sight, we are at the very end of Time Spiral, this major sort of pivotal piece of story for our storyline. If you're kind of looking at the fiction in Magic, um there's lots and lots of stories from many years and lots of cool things going on. But the Time Spiral block is where major a a major universe change happened that shifted things both kind of within a story and within the game um because i can talk about that uh a little bit after i'm done but this is this is when the mending happened um
00:04:17
Speaker
it both it's a It's a story thing, which you may have heard of if you haven't been playing then, but you've kind of heard about it more recently, and a sort of mechanical thing. But let's get into the actual story of this. So we have Teferi, main character here.
00:04:37
Speaker
i guess we're we're not starting there. Oh, and I do want to i do also want to shout out the Multiverse Interview I mentioned in these
Key Resources for Magic Lore Enthusiasts
00:04:42
Speaker
episodes. This is a website um that I learned a... from my my good friend Reinhardt who also has been on the podcast a few times and has written some magic fiction himself but this is a a blog, actually a blogspot blog that someone put together um doing reviews and walkthroughs of like basically every little tiny speck of Magic Story. They've got like defunct websites and card guides that came with the like bundles, back of the set bundles and things, like just all sorts of granular
00:05:19
Speaker
things that this person has dug into. It's super, super cool resource for people who are interested in digging into this sort of lore stuff. And so this has been helpful for us because like I've read all these books, both The Invasion and and The Tom's Herald block, but it has been many years. So this is a really helpful tool. So I'm going through here. There's just as ah is a as a nice shout out. if you're If you're really interested in story, I would check this this blog out. It hasn't been updated for a couple of years at this point, but there is a ton of old and weird stuff in here. That's, that's super cool talking about things that aren't even really Canon anymore. Some of the old comic books and stuff that have got sort of kind of written out of can.
Revelations of Lishrak and Nicol Bolas
00:06:02
Speaker
There's just all sorts of stuff in here, but anyway, so we, we start this story, the future book, a future site book. We started on the shores of Ladara. We see Lishrak, who is a old school planeswalker, who,
00:06:18
Speaker
Has kind of been in in the background doing things for the last two books, but has kept his name a secret, except it was kind of made some kind of obvious um references to himself. But so now we see at the beginning that was Lishrak the whole time. The person, the planeswalker behind the Weaver King, Lishrak.
00:06:39
Speaker
So Lishrak approaches the Myogen of Night's Reach. this is ah The Myogens, I hope I'm pronouncing that word correctly, were um powerful spirits from the Kamigawa block. And there's a a weird whole thing going on with Kamigawa. So there is a... Okay, this is going to be a weird tangent, but Nicole Bolas... who is now active again in the world. This happened at Time Spiral. He's hunting down the the science of the Umazawa clan because this was a group, this was a family from Kamigawa that at some point historically in the the multiverse... um
00:07:21
Speaker
I want to say 10, 20,000 years, something on that timeline brought some of the Umazar family to Dominaria, specifically to Madara, a place where Boas ruled for for a period of time. And I'll talk about that a little bit later. um That actually becomes relevant. Yes. The 15 to 20,000 year history becomes relevant to this book. And that's kind of the,
00:07:48
Speaker
The whole thing with Time Spiral where it digs deep on some lore. But in any event, so the Sumazawa clan was there. um One of the people in that clan is the person who killed Bolas before he was kind of resurrected during this storyline, this Time Spiral storyline.
00:08:08
Speaker
And so Bolas is out to enact some revenge. So the Miojan of Knights Reach and knows that Bolas is after her, offers this mask with power to steal powers um to Lishrak, hoping that he will use it against Bolas to help the Miojan not get killed by Bolas. So Lushrak then heads to Urborg, where he recruits um ah Dinah Ilvek, who was a killer who worked for the Weaver King, sends sends him to find Radha. After this point, Lushrak goes and begins to um manipulate Jessica, trying to pull Phage out of out of her.
00:08:51
Speaker
And so now we're we're back with kind of our main cast after this. We have Jessica um getting the conference call or youre having ah having a little chat with Joyra, Teferi, and Venser, kind of catching her up on the events. Jessica at this point is is a planeswalker after the events of the Odyssey block, I believe. i there's There's Odyssey and Scourge are two blocks that happen.
00:09:16
Speaker
after ice after I quit playing Magic and i I conflate the two. I believe this was the Odyssey block. um And then, so while they're they're explaining to Jessica what's going on with these rifts, that they have to stop these, so Jessica gets all this information from them but doesn't really like their plans and sets off to go to try to fix, to look into the rifts on her own.
00:09:38
Speaker
At this point, Lishrak then tells her um that they the Otaria and Yavimaya rifts are very complex, that sacrificing their own sparks might not even work on those, which is which is how Teferi closed one of one of the rifts that he closed. He sacrificed his spark.
00:09:59
Speaker
And... So Lishrak is, you know kind of feeding this information and trying to like ah say, hey, but you know, we could probably use Venser and Radha. Like they have links to these rifts. We could, ah you know, we could, we could adapt kind of what they did in a similar fashion to how Bolas used Venser to bring himself back to life.
00:10:20
Speaker
Uh, and so Jessica goes to inspect Radha, but Lishrak interferes by having, uh, Daini attack the Keldon
Rift Closures and Their Complexities
00:10:27
Speaker
war host. Just as Jessica is talking to Radha, making, creating some mistrust with jet with Jessica there, after some fighting, um, Radha is beaten and claimed by Jessica.
00:10:40
Speaker
Joraira and company head to Yavamiya, where they find Multani, um, stretched over the forest, protecting it from the rift. Um, Multani was a big character in like the Weatherlight saga. um he was a I don't know that he was ever actually officially part of the crew. i can't remember that, but I knew though he was ah was a friend in Gerard and was kind of part of that whole storyline, was also a big part of the invasion storyline, helping to like mobilize Dominaria's forces against the Phyrexian invasion. In this case, so they find him trying to protect Yavimaya
00:11:16
Speaker
ah against the rift. Lishrak then returns to Jessica, an officer with mask that he was given by Knights, the Major of Knights' Reach, telling her that it could help her control the black mana part of her and send them out of him. She refuses that help.
00:11:32
Speaker
Venser saves Multani, but then Teferi feels that Jessica's about to do something to the Zulfir and rift. They teleport over, but are unable to stop her from closing the rift before Zulfir can return.
00:11:44
Speaker
Now, um according to Teferi, doesn't feel it outside the time stream anymore. And so, you know, Jessica learns from Teferi that it seems that Zulfir can no longer phase back in.
00:11:56
Speaker
This rattles Jessica, but she is determined to continue. um So the group then, says the group tricks her to going into going to Yavimaya next. Multani reckons he can reason with her. So they get, he does this trapping of planes rocker trick he used on Urza, apparently in a in a previous story, which I have not read time streams.
00:12:16
Speaker
Lysrak meddles with the plans, enables Jeska to free herself, and then uses Multani and Radha to close the Yavimayan Rift. An interesting note is was doing some research, I can't remember what the Otarian Rift was caused by. That might have been Jeska, actually, so maybe I'm right on that. Because that's one one of the things is like all of these rifts that are destroying the plane and possibly all the planes. There's some weird talk about that. Is Dominaria being the central pillar and if it falls, the stress might cause the whole multiverse to collapse sort of thing. Well, these rifts are all, they're not just like, oh, this planet's been through so much stuff. There's just rifts everywhere. i mean, there is that. But all of these rifts, because again, the nature of the time spiral block, when it is just so full of references to previous lore and characters and cards, um all of these rifts are tied to some previous apocalypse or disaster.
00:13:14
Speaker
Some of them just disasters, some of them apocalypses, all the way up and down the the the spectrum. And so that's where like these rifts...
Shift from Dominaria to Other Planes
00:13:23
Speaker
as as we're getting this tour to close these and kind of change the magic story trajectory going forward, we're changing the nature of Sparks and how Planeswalkers work, we're also getting this like walk through history and going through all of these different major story arcs that have happened on Dominaria.
00:13:41
Speaker
um And it was, I thought it was super cool. Again, as a person who played since revised, I played a lot of these sets, not all of them but a lot of these sets. So a lot of this was really cool references to cards and events and things that I had seen. and it also was a really nice sendoff because after like a Dominaria hadn't been around,
00:14:00
Speaker
for the beginning of magic, like story-wise, basically everything took place on Dominaria. You have a few weird supplemental things like um one of the computer games took place on Chandelar and entirely different world, which we eventually saw get some story and stuff later too. And you had a couple of weird one-offs like the Arabian Nights was...
00:14:21
Speaker
Well, that had like actual references to real Earth, the 1001 Arabian Nights thing, which they sort of hand waved by, oh well, this is actually Rabia, an entirely different plane within the multiverse so that Earth doesn't actually exist in the magic multiverse.
00:14:37
Speaker
outside of those weird little exceptions, basically every set took place on Dominaria up until we finish Odyssey and then Scourge. And then I believe the next set was Mirrodin, which was the next, like that was the first set fully on another plane like that we'd visited a few planes i guess there was during the the weatherlight saga there was definitely a few like one-offs where you had the weatherlight crew traveling and they'd hit marcadia and they'd go to wrath and so you saw a couple of different planes like that um but the story was still centered on dominarian characters and conflicts and events even when it wasn't on dominaria until mirrored in
00:15:19
Speaker
though some of Myrdan's things are consequences from there, but then you get like the champions of Kamigawa block, you get the the Ravnica block, and then you come back to time spiral. We're coming back to Dominaria.
00:15:30
Speaker
We're getting another Dominaria story that had references, all these Dominarian stories. And then they leave Dominaria again, I think until the set Dominaria, I don't think they actually came back on a non like core set sort of thing. And even the core sets, I think we're mostly on like Chandelar.
00:15:46
Speaker
Um, Yeah, like it was it was not only like a nice homecoming after several years and and sets on different planes, but now in a way it was kind of a send off to where we we fix we go through all this. But I guess I'm getting I'm getting ahead of myself. So the whole point is that the Yavimayan rift. um was caused ultimately by the Silex that Urza set off to end the Brothers' War and that started the Ice Age. because Because at the time, like your current quote-unquote day Yavimaya on Dominaria is located is where Argoth was located during the Brothers' War, during the time of antiquities.
00:16:24
Speaker
Um, and which actually, I guess we revisited a little bit during the recent, uh, Phyrexian invasion cycle when there was literally the set brothers war that had a weird back, go back in time sort of thing going on.
Urza's Lasting Impact on the Multiverse
00:16:38
Speaker
And so like this, this rift that they're looking at now. So they did close that rift, um, with Multania and, and Radha, I think because Urza wasn't around anymore to to clean up his own, his own mess there. Um,
00:16:53
Speaker
So anyway, after closing this Yavimaya Rift, um Jessica takes Radha to Madara because there's ah there's another rift there. Radha has been seeing Jessica's memories while she was used to close this rift and felt like she was she was almost getting through to her, but Lishrak appeared again, putting Radha to sleep and imprisoning jessica um he uses the mask um to steal phages lethal touch power from her which is just a a cool thing in the um the card if you look up phage like she's heard like has death touch so you know kills creatures but also death touch for players like it's a cool i think mechanically it's a fun pretty unique i don't think it's entirely unique thing anymore but It is a super cool, like when, when Fage deals combat damage to a player, that player loses the game kind of a, a death touch for creature sort of thing. I suppose her mechanic isn't specifically, um, isn't take death touch. It was a similar mechanic that then became labeled as death touch later.
00:17:57
Speaker
Um, but yeah, it, Fage is a, is a, is a mechanical card. Super interesting. And, that is ah That's a whole other discussion at some point. we we We'll talk that block, um talk about Phage and Jessica and that whole storyline. But then so he steals this power from from Jessica, intending to use it to usurp Bolas as the strongest planeswalker. You have Joira, Venser, and Teferi show up.
00:18:23
Speaker
um In order to create distraction, Leashrek wakes Radha, summons Dean, and then Bolas shows up. Lishrak reveals he has woven spells into the Talon gates, which used to be, which were part of, of Bolas's, uh, power base constructions in this nation that he used to rule. Um, and so Lishrak says, you know this will rob the dragon of his mind touching, mind destroying touch.
00:18:48
Speaker
Um, which through this mask, Lysrak now has. And then Bolas seems to have the upper hand in the duel yeah know until Lysrak uproats the gates to distract Bolas and use his mind and body killing power.
00:19:04
Speaker
Unfortunately for him, Bolas reveals that he has already defeated the Knight's Reach and is now carrying around her face, which is the origin of the mask. So all of the powers Lishrak has been stealing have actually just been going right back to Bolas.
Nicol Bolas' Manipulations and Preparations
00:19:18
Speaker
Bolas traps Lishrak in the mask and uses ah his spark and life. He uses Lishrak's spark and life to seal the Madarin Rift. He then leaves to some safe spot in the multiverse to either write up the mending or the coming destruction. a couple notes like... um
00:19:35
Speaker
The Medoran Rift, which I didn't realize until I think it may have been mentioned in the book. I may have known this years ago. I didn't remember it until recently reading a little bit beforehand, but that was actually caused by Bolas some 15 to 20,000 years ago in the era when he ruled this this nation sort of with puppets. Apparently there was a fight to the death between Nicol Bolas and an unknown demonic Leviathan. This battle caused the shattering of Madara, destroying a third of the continent, and created the first time rift on the plain. The rift was located at the Talon Gates, which was a remnant of that conflict.
00:20:14
Speaker
And so this, here is Bolas, cleaning up his own mess, though using someone else to do it, cleaning up that rift. And basically, he he kind of, from what I recall of this event in the reading the book, Bolas basically makes it known to the party for the second time. Cause I think this is kind of what he said the first time he showed up in the first book too. Um, Hey, I could, I could totally take all of y'all, but you know, whatever. i don't really care if you guys want to fix things. You do you. Um, I, I got another place to be, uh, one of the quotes, um,
00:20:50
Speaker
that I got because there's some notes that this person on this blog has afterwards, which are there's just an extensive because, of course, this whole block is just reference after reference after reference. So there's a ton of fun little notes, which I'll hit a couple, but not not too many of. But Bolas, apparently the the quote that he he has from Bolas here is Dominaria may yet be destroyed and with it countless of the planes, but I have prepared a suitable place for myself in that eventuality. He also offers Radha a place there in the endless battle that he will arrange. um And I, when I came back to the game, because I remember hearing that, like oh, that's interesting. like He's going to be somewhere else. I assume there'd be somewhere like Pocket Dimension or something sort of half out of the multiverse in case the whole universe collapsed. He would have his own. He wouldn't be part of that.
00:21:39
Speaker
um And then coming back to the game many years after Time Spiral block, I kind of stopped playing after Time Spiral block. I came back like a decade later, um looking at some stories and stuff I missed. I noticed that like Bolas was a, came back to the story in a big way during the Alara block. And I just assumed that's what he meant. That was the place he had prepared for himself. But this ah blog writer mentioned that his description of endless battle pro might have, like, might fit Amonkhet. And it didn't hadn't even occurred to me that that, and so now I'm reading for this, that that would set up Amonkhet pretty well as as a place that he was setting aside for himself. Some of the details that he fit there were probably, might be additions for later. he didn't necessarily know how things were going to go, but um this also is a...
00:22:33
Speaker
Fun place for me to take the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite quasi-cycles in the game. so this isn't a real cycle, I suppose. you know ah in In a magic um set, in in kind of a construction standpoint, the cycle will be a set of cards, like one in each color. That's a cycle. A set of cards where you get one card in each thing. So let's use the term like vertical cycle, where you'll get a common, an uncommon, and a rare cycle.
00:23:02
Speaker
that kind of do similar things that tie into each other, are thematically connected in some way. um And so there's all sorts of these. You get like the swords, initially Sword of Fire and Ice and Sword of Light and Shadow were printed in Mirrodin, the original Mirrodin set, I believe. um And so you get those in that block and then it's like, oh, well, these are, you know, where's the rest of these? And so they slowly completed that cycle, the enemy colors first. And then years later started the allies. And again, we'd get like one here, one there and in sets as they kind of,
00:23:37
Speaker
pot them out. So those are kind of cycles that they eventually finish. Well, one for me, which I think is just flavorfully one of the coolest cycles they've ever built, was um a three-card cycle. a ah i think of it kind of as a quasi-cycle. And these are...
00:23:53
Speaker
Three um sorceries, I believe, all in Bolas's colors that tie to his time. And so this came out in the 2019 core set, which came out around the same time as the Amonkhet set. So we're getting this Amonkhet set. We're getting a lot of story about Bolas here as the Gatewatch go to stop him. And then in that core set nearby, where we also get the first like new cards for the for the dragons, alllthough all the various Elder Dragons, we also get these three two sorceries and an enchantment. The red Apex of Power.
00:24:33
Speaker
The black, Fraying Omnipotence, which might be my favorite card name ever. Just the flavor of fraying omnipotence is just beautiful. And then Patient Rebuilding.
00:24:46
Speaker
And so this is him tearing apart Amonkhet taking the gods and rebuilding them into you know his tools to to do the whole thing that's going on in that set that you know we we kind of talked about years ago when that came up and maybe we'll revisit that at some point too but this this whole cycle is a super cool bit of flavor. you get Bolas in all three of these arts. You get Quotes or flavor text around him. In Apex of Power, you have, As I desire, so it shall be.
00:25:15
Speaker
Praying Omnipotence, you have... I think... I'm i'm reading them in this order because I think this is kind of the order they probably happened in. Where it says, For the great mending that healed the multiverse also unraveled the threads of Nicole Bolas's power. And then patient rebuilding, Nicole Bolas would not rest until he was returned to his former glory. So it feels to me that, like...
Bolas' Journey Post-Mending
00:25:34
Speaker
Apex of Powers, while he's still an old planeswalker, godlike, nearly unlimited power, basically, fraying omnipotence is as he is losing that power. He's one of the few planeswalkers who helped contribute to the mending, or helped contribute to sealing these time rifts, who did not sacrifice his spark. So he did not sacrifice his own spark, but the mending happened, and that took his away, which I suspect if he knew that was going to happen, maybe he wouldn't have walked away from them, but that's... speculation we don't need to get into.
00:26:05
Speaker
And then, of course, the patient rebuilding is him. He's still the dragon. He still has nearly unlimited lifespan, even if he isn't all-powerful and godlike anymore. um Rebuilding Amonkhet to the plans that we see happen in, you know, the sort of the Gatewatch stories and the kerfuffle of the spark that happens on Ravnikau.
00:26:28
Speaker
And so after Nicole Bolas pieces out, he offers to bring Radha with him and she declines. um Then he pieces out. Radha uses her new link to green mana. She got from, she got in Yamamaya to root out Dine to the real world and kill him. Again, another another person like the like the the king am I blanking on on this guy's term? ah The Weaver King.
00:26:58
Speaker
Excuse me, like the Weaver King from the last episode, a shadow creature who who existed in between realms. This is a mechanic that goes back to the wrath block, wrath cycle. um that happens on the artificial plane of wrath. There's these creatures that had shadow mechanically. It was kind of like flying um more restrictive where a creature with shadow can only block other creatures with shadow, but also can only be blocked by other creatures with shadow.
Consequences of the Mending for Planeswalkers
00:27:27
Speaker
So like they're in this sort of other realm and can't interact with the living and, or the, they are living. They can't interact with people in the normal phase of reality with in normal circumstances.
00:27:40
Speaker
And so Radha takes care of that. The crew edges to make up with Jessica. They all leave to the last rift, which is an Otaria. There they work in unison. Jessica vents her Radha work in unison. Though it costs Radha her spark and Jessica her life. They do fix that rift. And now remember that the Otarian rift is from, well, Jessica's ah eventual ascension here, but when Jessica and two others,
00:28:08
Speaker
merged to be Jessica Fage and someone else merged to become um a chroma become a chroma, some other weird godlike thing. That's the whole so that's a whole storyline that happened in one of those books in one of the cycles. I think it was the Odyssey cycle.
00:28:26
Speaker
um And so there there again, Jessica is helping to close the rift associated with her. but um pays with her life in this case. Then Radha goes back to her war host, kind of resolving the end of the book here. Teferi goes to explore what's left of the subcontinent, what Zulfir used to be. Dreyra goes to reconnect with Jodah. So we see the both of them pop back up in the Dominarian story when we get back there many, many years later and in real life. And then Venser, after promising to ferry to guide new planeswalkers he might meet, goes off to explore the multiverse. He he still has his spark. And we kind of unfortunately know what leads to his end eventually.
00:29:10
Speaker
And so, you know, just ah kind of circle back. to the mending. um This changed the nature of how planeswalkers work. it changed the nature of the spark beforehand. The planeswalkers were very, very powerful, nearly omnipotent. I mean, that was the the card from Bolas, fraying omnipotence. He was all powerful and then was lost that as the mending sort of changed the nature of of how planeswalkers work. And so this was a big story thing, obviously. It it changed how planeswalkers work. It changed the nature of planar travel. So for a long stretch here until very recently when we when we got the new setup post the Phyrexian invasion, planeswalkers could go plane to plane. And there were more planeswalkers because they weren't godlike. They're just normal people who can happen to go to another place.
00:30:05
Speaker
But no, everyone else couldn't leave their plane. There were very, very few circumstances under which other people could move planes. um Basically none, I think. you know I mean, like that was the whole Lazatep thing with the Amonkhet zombies or he needed to hope coat these zombies in Lazatep so they can pass through a portal. Like a bunch of nonsense there.
00:30:29
Speaker
and Now we have ways for the story to do that, kind of a nice happy medium from a storytelling standpoint.
Introduction of the Planeswalker Card Type
00:30:35
Speaker
But at this point in time, this whole nature, but it also changed the game too, like the physical card game.
00:30:40
Speaker
um This gave us Planeswalker as a card type, because one of the whole things with Planeswalkers is both from a story standpoint and a card standpoint, we couldn't have an Urza card.
00:30:51
Speaker
He was central to the invasion story. He was central to a number of the planes. He was central to the... literally There was literally a cycle named after him. It was Versus Saga, Urza's Legacy, Urza's Destiny. And there was no card representing Urza as a character because he was so powerful in a story context that they couldn't make a card like that.
00:31:13
Speaker
So this is where we came up with that card type. Literally the next set after Time Spiral was Lorwyn. where we got the lower one five, the very first Planeswalkers printed into the game. It's this brand new card type. And so, hey, it gives us a new card type um where we can put these characters from the stories.
00:31:31
Speaker
we We can have these characters that recur plane to plane to plane, and we can put them in the cards and we can put them in the stories without having to have wild um stakes. You know, the invasion block, we can have a bunch of Planeswalkers active because the stakes are so high.
00:31:47
Speaker
We get to something even like Ice Age. There's a handful of planeswalkers acting a little bit there, but they ain't taking up a lot of page space. They're not super forefront because even though there's some fairly large stakes as we get later in that block, it's mostly has to be normal people. Stories can only be about, can only be so relatable and engaging when they are about wild stakes and massive God-like beings. We want to tell closer, more human stories. it's It's harder to do that with characters so powerful. And so this,
00:32:20
Speaker
did a lot of things for the game, both the game itself and the story around the game. And that's, you can see why I'm probably, probably see why I'm so interested in hidden fashion about it. Why, why I love this set so much. um I want to leave with just one, one more note kind of from the, the trivia section from this, this blog post about this Tom Sparrow book. And this is so this he was referencing a line as part of the Keldon Warhost at some point. It said, the power flowing from the Keldon Warhost to the Warlord is somehow not mana-based. So this is a quote from the blog writer.
00:32:56
Speaker
Now quoting the book, beyond mana, this was an essential elemental force channeled directly through living beings. Now the blog writer says, sounds a lot like meta to me, but apparently Jessica couldn't perceive it when looking for mana lines. And this is a reference not to like call him out, but I think one of the reasons why this whole thing is is so, I love the block so much. This is a little microcosm of that. Well, what they were referencing here, both the book and the blog writer, this is like, this is a reference to the Keldon Warlord, the first Keldon card in magic that came out in alpha way back when. where the Keldon Warlord, the the text is, a Keldon Warlord's power and toughness are each equal to the number of non-walled creatures you control.
00:33:42
Speaker
It was worded much, much more awkwardly than that in the beginning. It actually has an example here. The stars below are the number of non-walled creatures on your side, including Warlord.
00:33:54
Speaker
Thus, if you have two other non-world creatures, Warlord is 3-3. If one of those is killed during the turn, Warlord immediately becomes a 2-2. So I think this is a reference to that. It's not mana-based. It is how many creatures do you have on your side, which sort of fits the whole story of the held and kind of shows you how early cards that were sort of one-off things turned into the story that they they eventually used. And we have been...
00:34:23
Speaker
talking about for years on our podcast but this is just a great again even in the novel if they have a reference to the mechanics of this goofy creature card from from alpha uh so yeah like so i'm gonna gonna leave it there if this is something that's interesting to you um both the the story itself i would i would highly recommend checking out multiverse and review uh this blog A lot of cool things you can dig into there. um Also, we are going to probably continue talking about some of this stuff. I think I'd like to talk about the cards in Time Spiral next. We might... Well, we'll see what happens. I don't know what what the next you know month, month and a half is going to look like for for us, but um we will...
00:35:09
Speaker
You can see what we do going forward into the next year, though. We will absolutely be doing more of these old, old reviews, old stories, even if it's just to kind of fill in some gaps in in magic story coming out next year, of which
Future Podcast Directions
00:35:27
Speaker
there'll be a few. And of course, there's other stuff we'll get to at some point. We'll get back to, you know some of our more community focused and mental health focused episodes and and some things like that.
00:35:35
Speaker
um But as it is, i'm I'm going to leave you until next time. I hope everybody has as good holidays. This is ah this is a busy season. um Always you know take time to to take care of yourself. it's it's It's easy. And I do this a lot. It's easy for me to then point it out. Not so easy for me to follow my advice. But sometimes you just you do need to take care of yourself during these times, even as you're trying to ah take care of other folks as well.
00:35:58
Speaker
But have a good night. Hello Podwalkers, you have been listening to the Goblin Lore Podcast. Goblin Lore can be found on Blue Sky at GoblinLorePod or by going to our link tree for all of our links, especially to our Discord and our discounts.
00:36:15
Speaker
We welcome all feedback through social media or by joining our Discord which is very active. And now goblins, I just want to remind you that goblins, like snowflakes, are only dangerous in numbers.