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Episode 181: Taya Takes Over
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Hello, Podwalkers, and welcome back to another episode of the Sliver Lore Podcast! The slivers want to remind you that we have a very active and open Discord and love the oppurtinity for you all to join! This week is Taya on her own, and Alex and Hobbes are not nervous at all... wait what did that first sentence say? SLIVERS? OH NO
Again we would like to state that Black Lives Matter
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We also finally have a Linktree with all of our discounts/resources
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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
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- International suicide hotlines: A comprehensive resource list for people outside the US.
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- Trans Lifeline (US): (877) 565-8860
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Opening and closing music by Wintergatan (@wintergatan). Logo art by Steven Raffael (@SteveRaffle)
Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast, and a part of their growing Vorthos content – as well as Magic content of all kinds. Check them out at hipstersofthecoast.com
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsor Thanks
00:00:29
Speaker
Hello Podwalkers and welcome to another episode of the Goblin Lore Pod. This is Taya, pronouns are she, her, they, them, and it's just me tonight. I've been left unsupervised. So first things first, I'd like to thank the Grinding Coffee Company for providing us lots of support. They're a minority owned LGBTQ run company that keeps Hobbs running and provides him with all the caffeine he needs.
00:01:00
Speaker
and have always been super supportive of our podcast.
Embracing the Sliver Lore Podcast
00:01:03
Speaker
Second note is this podcast is now the Sliver Lore podcast. We all want to be part of the hive mind here. Join me in the hive mind for the rest of today and no one's here to tell me otherwise, so that's what we're going to do. We're going to be part of the hive mind.
00:01:24
Speaker
What do hive minds like more than stories?
Overview of Side Stories
00:01:27
Speaker
Today's podcast is going to be talking about the side stories for March of the Machine. So far, as of this recording, we have eight of them by a variety of authors that are across many planes as this storyline would
00:01:45
Speaker
Indicate doing being a planar invasion. So I'm gonna just briefly go over each of the stories that we've had so far talk about my thoughts on them and We're gonna go from there and I hope that you all enjoy this Walk with me through what has been some absolutely fantastic stories to set soon we will have a
00:02:11
Speaker
episode on the main stories. We are waiting for those to conclude before we do.
Archivosa Invades Strixhaven
00:02:17
Speaker
So for today, let's start with Archivosa, Radiant Heart by Evelyn Tang. So the Phrexians have come to Strixhaven, and first things they do is complete all the teachers. And this might be what a lot of students dream about, but I don't think they're quite thrilled with how this has happened, because now their teachers are hunting them down and trying to complete them.
00:02:41
Speaker
which I would consider a failing grade. So the story picks up with our five students from the Strixhaven stories before Quintorius, Ruth, Dina,
00:02:58
Speaker
Zymone and Killian. So we get one from each of the schools. They all got their own stories during the Strixhaven block or set. I keep saying block. There hasn't been blocks in a long time. And you can probably hear my cat purring. She is sitting right on top of my mic and I apologize for that. But she's going to be my co-host tonight. Callie, say hi to everybody that's listening.
00:03:27
Speaker
Anyway, so we, we catch up to them. They are busy running from the converted professors and they're looking for a secret spell in the biblioplex that is going to help them. Um, the founder spell to help them get rid of the phyrexians and, um, you know, professor Liliana sent them all on this goose chase. Um, I guess Liliana was too busy.
00:03:56
Speaker
dealing with the Phyrexians to go on her own. So she sends children to do the job. And what do you know? They managed to get through it. We have a lot of hide and seek with the converted, the Phyrexian teachers throughout the episode. They're constantly running and fighting them and trying to avoid being completed themselves. And at one point they run into
00:04:25
Speaker
Professor Ambrose, Killian's dad, a complete jerk. I don't know why he's a teacher. He's abusive and just a terrible person. But in this case, he keeps the Phyrexians busy so the students can escape. And they finally find the McGuffin they're looking for in the library. And what do they do with this? Well, they have to each cast part of the founding spell again. And of course, there's a part for each of the
00:04:56
Speaker
different schools to do it together. This starts going really well and everybody's doing their part and talking about it and then something goes wrong. They all get the going and casting and then phyrexians show up. Well, that's, you know, not good. It's too much going on.
00:05:25
Speaker
Too many just for the students to handle. They're trying to cast the spell. The phyrexians show up. And the art is really cool here. There's some art by Dimitri Bermock that shows them casting this founder spell and all of them together. And it looks like they're going to get rid of the phyrexians, but. That's before they get distracted and. Ruth gets.
00:05:55
Speaker
pulled up side by Dean Nisari and just can't finish her spell. So Quintorius picks up Ruth's part of the spell too and finishes it. And, boom, spell sort of finished. Quintorius disappears. Very much implied that he is now a planeswalker. That's what Liliana thinks.
00:06:20
Speaker
his art, the art that we got from Elias Kettinen shows him kind of disappearing into a white cloud of sparks during the middle of the spell. So they temporarily at least saved Strixhaven from the Phyrexians but the spell was incomplete so the Phyrexians are still right there knocking to get right back in.
Ikoria's Survival Battle
00:06:45
Speaker
And that's kind of where we leave Strixhaven.
00:06:48
Speaker
You'll see a pattern of this throughout that we have a lot of victories over Phyrexia or at least partial victories and that seems to be the theme of a lot of these stories. The next story was one that kind of made my day because it was Ikoria and we all know that or what you learn in the main story is that
00:07:17
Speaker
and Ellish Norn sends off a lot of the completed planeswalkers to take over the planes they were from and she dispatches Luca back to Ikoria to take over the plane and he's supposed to... they don't have high expectations for him though and we'll discuss this more when we get into the main story because I don't... I think Ellish Norn recognizes Luca's a putz too and isn't going to succeed at what he's doing
00:07:46
Speaker
but we pick up with the survivors from Drannith, led by General Jarena, and Drannith was completely wiped out by the monsters, and they're being tracked by this humongous Luca monster at this point. He's been soaking up all kinds of other monsters and just becoming huge and
00:08:13
Speaker
Even more obnoxious than he was before So he's hunting them. They're trying to escape. They're trying to get to Will have a brain I forget the poor red city that was left completely out of the story but So they have to fight monsters they're trying to save themselves they fight phyrexians, it's not great and
00:08:41
Speaker
We get to once again hear from we get Vivian Hooked up with the monster hunters again, and they don't get along at all It's just but they are trying to delay or stop the Luca monster and Vivian is willing to work with anybody at this point to give it done even if it is these really creepy Monster hunters led by Chevelle
00:09:10
Speaker
and they watched Luca basically tear apart an escaping Vanasaur that he then pulls in and grabs some bits out of that and gets even bigger. I like how they refer to it as the Luca thing. It's just this horrible flesh beast at this point and
00:09:39
Speaker
Put together from all different bits of monsters and oh kind of gross. It's just Luca totally doing his own thing and Like he went and merged with the beasts on Phrexia now. He's merging with all the monsters he can catch on Ikoria so Chevelle and the monster hunters and Vivian try to stop him they Slow him down a little bit, but fell pretty miserably so we cut back to Jarena and
00:10:10
Speaker
they're still trying to escape, but they realize that they're not going to get to lava brink in time. So Jarena has this plan of leading the leading everybody down this long and twisty canyon, which they eventually reach a dead end at. And some of the people realize that they're totally screwed at this point. This is not just any canyon. This is the layer of one of the apex monsters.
00:10:41
Speaker
And the plan that General Drina has was to lure basically use her people as bait to lure Luca and the apex monster in there at the same time and let them fight it out, which is not a bad idea other than you're likely to get your people eaten at the same time.
00:11:13
Speaker
I don't know. It's a good chance to... It's a good idea. Probably the best idea that she could come up with at the time. And Vadrak basically rips the Luca monster to shreds. While he's numbing on Luca, Vivian puts a bunch of arrows through Luca.
00:11:37
Speaker
And just like that, Luca is no more. We've dispatched one of the converted planeswalkers. And then the people that, Radik just up and leaves, apparently, and the people that are there realize what General Dreena did, and then they're like,
00:11:58
Speaker
pretty much just want to kill her at this point. But they're like, well, at least for now we're going to stick together because we're fighting these monsters and we don't know what else to do. But that is the end of Luca. I know we have one person in the discord that will miss him. So I'm sorry, your pal Luca is no more.
00:12:24
Speaker
I don't think the rest of the multiverse is going to care. The next place we pick up is on Ixalan, and this story is titled 300 Steps Under the Sun by Miguel Lopez.
Ixalan's Dinosaur Summoning
00:12:38
Speaker
We're back in Araska with a bunch of the survivors being led by Watley at the top of the wing temple of Araska.
00:12:54
Speaker
They're just trying to keep the Frexians at bay. They've almost been overrun. They, you know, they're barely surviving at this point and don't know what to do. So what do we get? Um, we get a flashback and first we get a flashback. That's just a couple of hours previous and it's when they're.
00:13:15
Speaker
fighting through the city to even try to get to the temple. And it turns out that one of the people that's there with them is Mavrin Fain, one of the vampires. So they're working together against the Phyrexians. We don't know why at this time, but there's a lot that they, at this point, even the vampire conquistadors are like, yeah, we'd rather work with
00:13:42
Speaker
Empire of the Sun than we would rather done deal with the Phyrexians. So they've been fighting a lot up to when the Phyrexians showed up and Mavrin had been taken prisoner and so Mavrin and his crew become reluctant soldiers in the fight against Phyrexia. Then we jump back again days before the invasion at the start of the invasion and
00:14:11
Speaker
We find out that the Sun Empire had been planning a giant invasion fleet to attack the home country, Thereson, of the vampires. They had cleaned up the vampires and their terrain on the continent of Ixalan and were ready to take the fight to the vampires. They had just dispatched this massive fleet and then the Phyrexians show up and ruin their whole little invasion plan.
00:14:40
Speaker
And the Emperor seems more upset about the fact that his invasion plan was ruined than he does that the Phyrexians are converting and chewing there. Converting the people and chewing everybody up. And we pick up with Watley and the court while they're arguing over what to do here and the Emperor throwing a temper tantrum and
00:15:07
Speaker
Watley pitches this idea of sending a group to Orazka to summon the Elder Dinosaurs. What a group that would be to get all the Elder Dinosaurs together to fight the Phyrexians. The Emperor agrees to this plan. Watley gathers some volunteers, including picking out Maverin Fane from the dungeon, and they set out to Orazka.
00:15:36
Speaker
the Empire does a proxy fight or you know distracting fight with the Phyrexian so that the Arascha crew can sneak out the back door and Get away with it. So We pick up again back before the When they arrive at Arascha and
00:16:02
Speaker
one of the problems they run into shortly, they find some people who had been garrisoned at Orozco, they meet up and they're like, okay, cool, we can do this. We can fight the people that are there. And then somebody sees a Tali, but it's not a Tali, it's a completed a Tali. And boy, do they look scary and all their lightning and everything is striking around them.
00:16:29
Speaker
They're all green on the inside. There's some really cool art by Ryan Pancoast. I'm very bummed as someone who Itali is my favorite of the dinosaurs because they're red. So of course they would be my favorite, but I also have the coolest ability. So I'm very bummed that they took Itali from me. Needless to say that in the face of a phyrexianized elder dinosaur, the little band of troops that
00:16:58
Speaker
Watley brought with her, cannot stand against that might at all. So they immediately take shelter and decide that they have to get to the top of the wing temple in order to call the other elder dinosaurs to Bay. So, and there's a 300 steps, hence the title of the story that go from the archway at the middle section up to the summit.
00:17:28
Speaker
And that's that's a lot of steps. I don't know if you've been doing your you know doing some workout, but that that's a lot that is I Don't know. I I couldn't do it. I'm but I'm also old and fat so 300 steps would just kill me. Thankfully huatli is in much better shape than I am Because they eventually decide they can't hold the phrexians off anymore.
Innistrad's Stalemate
00:17:53
Speaker
So they're just gonna make a run for it
00:17:55
Speaker
they leave everybody behind to choke the phyrexians on the choke point coming up into the temple and Take it for the top decide to go for a dash for the top, but then we get a cutaway to some time ago and What Lee is spending time with the Healy we get a really lovely lesbian romance scene here while they're getting ready for the invasion they know that's coming and
00:18:24
Speaker
they get to spend some time together. And they're at Saheli is visiting Quatly on Ixalan. And they get to spend some time together and talk about a person that served the empire out of vengeance. He was just one of the former warrior poets and basically had an absolutely miserable life, but served the empire anyways. And Saheli asked why and
00:18:54
Speaker
Potley said, for revenge, for long revenge. And I really liked this here, that the idea was that by making everybody mourn her, that she would get her revenge on the Emperor. And we get this lovely little scene in the side before the end of the world. And then, you know, sadly, we get back into the fight and
00:19:24
Speaker
Tali has ripped up, whipped up a hurricane and there's Hal and rain and lightning and everybody's just doing their best to try to stay alive. And while they get to the, Watley makes it to the altar and prays, you know, hoping that they can hold the phyrexian tide back until her prayers are here heard and the dinosaurs come.
00:19:53
Speaker
And they do hold back. They hold back for quite a while. And then we start getting the elders showing up. Zapalta being the first one, piercing Batali's hurricane and plunging towards the earth. And we got our big white indestructible elder dinosaur that they include in all the commander sets for whatever reason. They really love this in the pre-cons. I guess it is a big white beater, but
00:20:23
Speaker
Um, so as the Palta starts fighting a Tally and a whole bunch of other dinosaurs show up and then Tetsumak, uh, scourge of limited shows up and starts attacking a bunch of the phyrexians and just absolutely smashing the phyrexians to bit. And then Galta shows up and takes on a bunch of phyrexian gargantuans in
00:20:55
Speaker
just like a big green monster does absolutely obliterated them and Nezor Hall joins the fight too and you know uses some water cannons and fights everything so they team up fight the Giants and then the Natali is still around and Watley is wondering where Zakama is and was worried she was turned or dead and
00:21:26
Speaker
Zapalta is not doing very well fighting Itali. So, um, about this time, Watley finishes running down back to where the rest of her people are and hangs out with them for a bit. And then Sakama, Sakama shows up and Sakama just bowls down a bunch of all the people and the Frexians at once with just a giant A attack.
00:21:56
Speaker
big dinosaur. And then she rips our poor Phyrexianize Tali to bits. Good job, Zacama. But I'm going to miss you, Atali. You've played me a lot of cards off of other people's decks. We'll still have our good times together.
Rankle's Eldraine Love Potion
00:22:21
Speaker
I don't know what Phyrexina Tali is going to do. Maybe we'll get to
00:22:26
Speaker
play cards out of people's graveyard or something. Who knows? We'll have to see what the card does. Then we get to what has become one of my top five favorite stories ever. It's Innistrad Family Game Night by Seanan McGuire. We don't have any planeswalkers here to defend Innistrad, no. What we have
00:22:52
Speaker
are the wonderful siblings, Giza and Gralf. This starts like most of their stories with letters back and forth to each other about their current work in setting up... Gralf has set up himself in Havengul, Giza's set up a little bit outside of the city, and they're working on their undead like they always are.
00:23:22
Speaker
But something's different's going on. And, you know, Gerald mentions that there's corpses washing up that can't be stitched in. He's been put in charge of researching the phenomenon by Ludovig. Sorry, I was just, I had to step away a second.
00:23:45
Speaker
and Giese is asking about these weird lights in the sky and the white branches and was asking if it was Jarof's doing and oh yeah I love the Sasani siblings so much they're they're just the best and um as
00:24:08
Speaker
Seanan put it on Twitter that they, they solve 80% of, uh, Innistrad's apocalypses and cause the other 20%. In this case, I think we know what side they're going to be on. Um, and we get to see that, you know, we get a lot more from Gissa's point of view that, you know, she's basically gotten bored the, uh, and is hoping to have another fight with her brother when a bunch of
00:24:38
Speaker
new figures shambled out of the river and I was like, oh, I got something else to do. So she thought maybe Jaralf was offering up a game and except these weren't like, these weren't scabs. They, you know, were covered in glistening oil and all white and red and just started attacking her as she puts it, sweet, innocent ghouls.
00:25:09
Speaker
And she immediately thinks that Drowth is breaking the rules and not her time that this would be that there's a prohibition on magical weapons. So she basically has her whole group of ghouls fight off the advancing monstrosities and just deals with them the way a good ghoul caller would
00:25:40
Speaker
Then she finds out, interestingly enough, that she can't raise these ones from the dead. They will respond briefly when she calls them, but as soon as she's not paying attention to them anymore, they fall back over. Her first thing that comes to mind for her is to message her brother and see what kind of cheating he was doing here.
00:26:08
Speaker
not supposed to, uh, be playing like this. So writes, writes him a nasty letter. Um, and I love this line. You've done something I would never have thought impossible, brother, dear, you have ruined the undead. Do not do this again. And you're off gets back to her with a warning about, don't let the oil touch who, um, you know, talks about it being a contagion and
00:26:37
Speaker
somebody actually gave them any information on what the phyrexians are and he says they're not his creation and they're here to destroy all that makes Innistrad itself so we need to hold them back or um all even the dead may be lost this is um
00:26:58
Speaker
But points out in their favor that the oil affects the living mind and cannot infect the risen dead, be them school, ghoul or scab. So it gets the, it puts the siblings in a really good position to fight back against Phyrexia here. And right as Gissa is looking at her reply, a whole bunch more Phyrexians show up, including humans and werewolves that were
00:27:24
Speaker
Frexian eyes, which just sounds pretty awful. I don't want to fight a Frexian werewolf. A werewolf sounds scary enough as it is. So she gets back to Giso with, uh, if anyone's going to destroy Innistrad, it's going to be us. So I propose Necro warfare united against Frexia, winner take all. And they bet their current
00:27:52
Speaker
living arrangements after whoever wins gets to stay and Whoever loses will leave so we get the whole long drawn-out fight between the scobs and the ghouls and They keep trying to one up each other while they're fighting off the phyrexians The whole time and we get first we get a behemoth
00:28:20
Speaker
raised by or scobbed together stitch together from giraffe and You know guess is not having this so she Calls a hullbreaker whore and they both dig these both these huge monsters do a good job of stomping phyrexians But they eventually fall just under the phyrexian hordes so Giraffe makes a proposal to If
00:28:49
Speaker
Gisa will allow him to use the corpse of her hullbreaker whore that he's going to make something huge to deal with the problem and She reluctantly agrees so he has his minions bring back the corpses of both of the hullbreaker whore and the behemoth to the City where he has to work outside because they're too big for his labs and he makes the biggest stitch monstrosity ever and
00:29:18
Speaker
it is just absolutely huge and it's it's really a work of genius and that they let Seanan play with a stitched behemoth slash hullbreaker whore and fight the phyrexians with it is just it's a thing of beauty and it's a good thing that the siblings fight each other or they would have conquered phyrexian a long time ago and
00:29:48
Speaker
course their their monstrosity picks apart the phyrexians it absolutely crushes them before it falls over on itself you know and then they get all the corpses burning and because you don't want to leave a bunch of dead phyrexians around especially if you can't raise them from the dead yourself and they agree that neither of them won
00:30:18
Speaker
And it's just another day on Innistrad. That's what it comes down to. It's the survivors of Havengal are huddled in their homes, army of undead squaring up in the wild plain outside the estuary ready to resume their eternal fight. Some things are beyond even forexies ability to change. I absolutely love the story that back and forth between, um, the siblings is fantastic. The.
00:30:47
Speaker
Shawnan's way with words is wonderful. There's a line somewhere in the story about Giza being patient because once something happens, she happens to it. And I just, I really love that because yes, she has something that happens to things, not the other way around.
00:31:15
Speaker
The next story we get, I'm going to breeze through a little bit quicker, but it is, uh, Eldraine, the adventures and wrinkle master of love by Jenna Helen. This one was a little different than the rest. Um, it starts off with wrinkle and a court of Faye. Uh, and he thinks he's getting crowned as the leader of this group of Faye, but they actually are pulling a trick on him and kicking him out of the.
00:31:42
Speaker
Fairy circle completely because he's just a jerk and mean and nobody wants to deal with him and so He ends up getting booted out. He gets his wing hurt in the process so he can't fly very well Eventually finds Tulane and wants to pick Tulane's pocket. So he has some money and just follows him around for a while and then he sees Iara and
00:32:10
Speaker
Rankle just is smitten by Iara and just decides immediately that he's going to be her next husband and wants to do anything he can to do that. Chulain is ranting about the end of the world coming and something awful happening. But Rankle doesn't care. He just wants to be with Iara. And so he goes to a town, finds a witch,
00:32:40
Speaker
And what's a love potion, uh, terrible, terrible, um, trope, but the witch is like, no, no love potions are creepy. Um, and makes up an excuse about some love flower. Uh, and the witch is like, I'm, I'm leaving town or we're going to go join forces to fight the doom that's coming. And rankles like, Nope, I'm going to marry a Yara. I need to.
00:33:08
Speaker
do this so he goes seeking this long lasting lilac of longing and then pretty much gets caught in a swarm of phyrexian nice dogs and ends up getting saved by a dwarf with a big axe and a shiny ring and
00:33:32
Speaker
The Dwarf says the courts have fallen and the Kenrith are gone, which we've already seen a preview card from Aftermath that shows the burial place of the Queen and King Kenrith. So that's sad. I really liked that family, so we'll have to see what happens with them in Aftermath.
00:33:59
Speaker
But the dwarf turns out to be Torbran, our favorite red damage buffing dwarf. And Rinkle is still obsessed with trying to get with Ayara and sees this ring on Torbran's finger and thought it would be perfect for a marriage proposal.
00:34:25
Speaker
And Torban is still expecting Wrinkle to see, you know, everything is going to hell and we should do something about that. Wrinkle never quite gets the memo here. And while Thorban is sleeping, Wrinkle turns his ring into a caterpillar. And after it crawls off, Wrinkle steals it. And turns out it's a ring of wishing. And
00:34:54
Speaker
During the night, the castle Lachthuin was wiped out and now there's just a mass of Frexian abominations all over and Wrinkles looking for Ayara and then they find the Frexianized version of them and Wrinkles lost a lot of interest at this point.
00:35:21
Speaker
Oh, and Rankle has already used some of the wishes by wishing for a basket of goodies and gets over a bunch of cookies, which I think that's, that's probably not the best use for a wish. But if you're going to get a bunch of cooking cookies, you need it. He makes a second wish, which is for a love potion and it appears in his hand. Then he sees Ayara and he's kind of lost interest in that.
00:35:52
Speaker
And so he makes his third wish and he wishes it would rain and Torb have sink to the grass for you've killed us all and then wrinkle finishes. I wish it would rain this holding up the love potion. And whoa, he just charmed all of the Frexians and they walk into a huge pit because they're all in love with wrinkle and he is right
00:36:19
Speaker
through the edge of a cliff and they all go right in. I don't know. This one ends in a weird place where Rankle is surrounded by his devoted admirers. He slowly drifted down with the rest on the throne of fallen admirers. He never felt so wanted. He never felt so loved. Well, I don't know if you want to be loved by all those Phyrexians. That's probably not very healthy.
00:36:49
Speaker
begin with, but Wankle manages in the most ridiculous way possible to defeat a large portion of the Phyrexian forces on Eldraine, and I guess we will find out later what happens to the rest of them.
Vraska's Ravnica Conflict
00:37:06
Speaker
And now the one that brought tears to my eyes, Ravnica, one and the same, by Allison Lors. We are very fortunate to get Allison back. This was
00:37:18
Speaker
her last story before leaving Wizards, she talked about on her Twitter account. And the story picks up with Vraska showing up on Ravnica to claim it for Phyrexia, except she's got
00:37:40
Speaker
her own things going on a little bit. Vraska is still dealing with some memories that are hers and not Phyrexian that keep poking themselves in. Her personal feelings start to focus the invasion on things that she's more interested in. Her first stop is to destroy the Azorius where she was held prison.
00:38:08
Speaker
it flashes back to her being held in the prison and the other people around you, her being tortured and having their eyes removed, the other Gorgon. It's pretty awful. The Azorius are just not nice people, especially since none of the Golgari even should have been arrested to begin with.
00:38:35
Speaker
Then we switch back to the Phyrexianized version of Frasco, which in this story, all of her Phyrexian thoughts are in red. And she decides after this flashback to start blinding all of the people that they're fighting, having her Phyrexian minions blind them before they are killed or completed. And she has another flashback to
00:39:04
Speaker
Time with Jace on Ixalan. This time she starts to say something out loud and opens her eyes and her lieutenant looks at her. Kind of like, what's going on here? You're acting a little weird. She slips back into, sees some Selaznians, so gets right back into her killer instinct and
00:39:33
Speaker
Then she decides to check out her old apartment of all places. She hadn't lived there since becoming Guildmaster, but it was full of all sorts of little collections that she had picked up across the multiverse, including a
00:39:52
Speaker
They're in pot with tea and a Kaldheim drinking horn and a Segovian chariot, which I think is the hilarious bit that she keeps under a glass bell jar. Just for those who aren't familiar with Segovia, it is the tiny plane. Everything on it is small. So she apparently at some point brought home a
00:40:18
Speaker
Chariot from Segovia, but then her forexian version is like this is all garbage. What is this? We don't need any of this stuff. This is Someone else's memories. I Don't care about any of this and You know and it keeps switching back and forth between brassicas memories and brassicas by rexian eyes inner voice
00:40:42
Speaker
And then they focus on the thematic compass, which is in the center, on the center table, and talks about how she got her memories back before, after Ixalan, but before War of the Spark. And they go over a lot of, a bit over some of those memories. And then we get back the Phyrexian version of Frasca, who is,
00:41:11
Speaker
Go spill as much glistening oil on the streets as you can, and blind them all. She's still on this blinding everybody thing after her flashback to her gorgon. The other gorgons that were captured with her being blinded. And then she has a brief memory of Nicol Bolas. And I don't fondly remember that he trusted her to lead. Before, no, Phyrexia did, but no.
00:41:40
Speaker
So they go to the Hall of the Guild pack and she recognizes Lavinia's desk and the private office that Jace used to spend his late nights in. We still don't know where Jace is, by the way. He's been kind of, he's one in the main story. They don't tell you where he's going. And so far he has not shown back up, which makes me nervous. And it cuts back to Phyrexian.
00:42:11
Speaker
Phyrexian, Vraska completing a bunch of people including is it people and puts the blinded is it phyrexians at the front of the line as they approach Ralph Zarek and Really freaks out Ralph Zarek. He Is absolutely disgusted by this and Then there's Ralph Zarek has a small Cylinder cylindrical device that
00:42:40
Speaker
He punches Verasco with and hits a button and it basically attacks her phyrexinized bits. She's broken, disintegrating, vomiting up, oily bile. And we get, she can't move anymore. She's covered by rubble. And then we get the, I wake in a small and distant corner of my mind that Pharesis could never touch.
00:43:10
Speaker
We get a very long section of her on a, a seemingly imagined date with Jace, where they're talking to each other and, and Vraska's regretting the monster that she's been and the fact that she lured Jace to his completion and that she deserves to die and Jace is comforting her and,
00:43:39
Speaker
So that wasn't her, that was Phyrexia. And they spend the time together, and they have this pretty hot make-out session, which goes on about how great it would be to make out with a empathetic telepath. And then this section ended with, and I grasp by my ambition, erupting and startling, your kinescent white.
00:44:08
Speaker
Then we come back to Ral. Two days later, they have successfully pushed back the Phyrexians, but Vraska's corpse was nowhere to be found. So we're left with a cliffhanger here on what happened to Vraska. Whether she planes walked away is kind of the guess a lot of people have had in her delusional state, her
00:44:35
Speaker
a stationary state where she's imagining herself with Jace. Maybe she's gone off someplace and to be with him or to, you know, finish dying. But we don't know yet. So Vraska is a huge question mark of what's happened to her. And hopefully we will find out soon by the end of the story because I want to know where I want to know where she is. She's one of my favorite characters.
New Capenna Resistance
00:45:06
Speaker
And then we catch up to We have two more stories left one is new kapena the fall of Park Heights by Elise Kova and this one This one's interesting because we get
00:45:23
Speaker
The point of view for this story is from Arendt, who was Arnhelio's daughter, and we get a story about them from the last block about their wedding with their wife, Parnesus. And Arnhelio is trying to get everything together for the wedding and has to go assassinate somebody first to
00:45:51
Speaker
make sure that they don't interfere with the wedding. And that was a really great story. I recommend you go read it. And this time we have a different thing is it picks up with them already. Arendt is having a vision during her wedding ceremony of basically everybody she knows being completed and transformed and she grabs her wife and runs out
00:46:21
Speaker
the uh runs out and finds the plane being invaded so we have uh and we kind of skip forward a little bit to they've been being pursued by phyrexian converter beast which
00:46:42
Speaker
This is one thing that I was kind of confused by the story here is because a track so was under orders to murder Everybody on new kapena and just harvest bits, but they actually in this story The maestro's have largely been converted and they have these converting converging beasts out looking for more people So this was something I thought was a little
00:47:09
Speaker
different from what we've seen in the main story happening here, and I'm really surprised with what we got or when we got to this story. But anyways, they're trying to escape, and Pharesis is hurt. Parnissus, sorry. Parnissus has a hurt leg, so they're having trouble getting away from his Pharexion.
00:47:35
Speaker
And it turns out they're holding, um, a bag of explosives that were provided for them because they've been working with the resistance and the, uh, they get caught between two. Phyrexians and they decide that they would rather go out together than get converted. So they blow things up with their explosives. And then it turns out they survive these errant wakes up later and.
00:48:03
Speaker
happens to be in the presence of an angel. Pernice also survives, but is in much worse shape, and turns out the angel healed them with a whole lot of Halo. And we get this. Angel's name is Dela, and they're helping the resistance fight the
00:48:29
Speaker
Phyrexians, even if they're not too happy with how the families have been using Halo, it's basically Angel Juice, but they would rather fight the Phyrexians than just turn over and let everybody get killed.
00:48:51
Speaker
So at first, Erent wants to be done with this whole thing. They have this plan to basically bring down Park Heights on a Traxxas head. They can't fight her directly, so they're going to trap her and then crash the entire district down on top of her. And they want Erent to be the one to, because Erent is basically a parkour master and they want her to be the one to plant the explosives.
00:49:19
Speaker
So their errant doesn't want to do it, but her nieces convinces her and. So they go forward a couple of days with the plan being ready. And go for it. You know, errant gets in place, pops the explosions, has to pull off these really cool things with.
00:49:44
Speaker
She made some halo paint bombs, and there's some cool art by Oliver Bernard that shows this being used on some giant phyrexian. And the halo is essentially poisonous to the phyrexians. So she makes these paint bombs that splatters all over them and helps some people escape and distracts them while she's heading there. And she also has basically an airbrush gun that has the same
00:50:12
Speaker
same kind of a haloized paint in it, and uses that to dispatch a Phyrexia that had been chasing her across the girders. And so she gets to the area, the weak spot in the architecture, she plants the explosives, and then Arne Helio shows up. And Helio, not Arne Helio, and is doing the just come join Phyrexia speech, which
00:50:43
Speaker
Aaron's basically like, you're not my dad. You can't tell me what to do. I'm not going to join you. You're, you were, you know, my dad was an artist and Frexia doesn't understand beauty. Beauty is mess and experimentation, failure and triumph and all bittersweet yet hardships that come from pushing boundaries of what is known. It is originally out. It is. It's in originality. You knew that once.
00:51:11
Speaker
And then it was, but I saw the truth. That's not the truth. That's only what Phyrexia tells you. And he tries to get her to join and she can't bring herself to spray him with the halo. But then she sees the fireworks, halo fireworks going off, which is a signal to blow the explosives. And she jumps and pushes the button and says goodbye to her dad who, assuming he gets blown to bits,
00:51:40
Speaker
And she gets caught falling through the air. She misses a jump and gets caught by Della and Flowing back to the rest of the resistance who all survived. Yay, everybody And then we get an interesting bit the angels are all departing through the invasion portals and They're going to help win the war supposedly
00:52:11
Speaker
And Parneus whispers, it's breathtaking. And the shining angels, angry cheers initially between the clouds, a city burning down and yet somehow also rising in tandem. And Eren's arm slips around her wife's waist. It is. It looks like hope. So that's the end of the New Copenna story. We get the angels departing.
Nahiri's Portal Plot
00:52:34
Speaker
I'm guessing this is going to lead into the grand finale.
00:52:40
Speaker
Where we're gonna have a big fight against the remaining prayer doors Which we will talk about more when we do the full story episode And that leaves us with one more story. This one was listed on our main stories, but is not part of the main story So I'm gonna cover it here in side stories and this is zenekar battles in the field and in the mine by 80 greenblatt This starts off with Nahiri's point of view and
00:53:12
Speaker
She's there to save, in her view, save Zendikar once more, and where she's been stopped or failed previously, she will succeed this time. And she's using her Lithomancy to connect all the Hedrons back together to better open up the portals to New Phyrexia to bring more of the invasion through. And we get set up with
00:53:42
Speaker
Ikiri, who's been dispatched by Tazri based on a vision to go do some recon of the Skyclaves and find out what's going on, and Ikiri discovers that... Ikiri's there with Ludvala, and they discover that Nahiri is back, and so...
00:54:08
Speaker
The Curie sends off Linvala to Warren Tazzary who is fighting at Seagate and Turns out they're completely getting their butts kicked at Seagate. There's just More and more phyrexians keep showing up the pods get there faster and faster and Linvala gets there and
00:54:31
Speaker
tells Tazri that Nahiri is, you know, returned and Tazri's like, good, we could really use the help of a planeswalker. And she is not returned as an ally. And Tazri has this, finds this hard to believe until she gets more descriptions and Tazri wants to keep fighting, but the city is pretty much a lost cause. The Limbala picks her up and drags her off back to the Skyclave and
00:55:00
Speaker
We get another view with Nahiri, basically putting the royal in its place. It tries to stop her, but she just shuts it down completely with her enhanced lithium antsy. And then we get back to Ahkiri and her friend, Ora, and Kazza. They're basically looking for a way into
00:55:29
Speaker
an area that isn't corrupted into the Skyclave and they finally found a spot right when when Vala and Tazri show up and then they start going through the Skyclave and they're like why aren't we getting attacked yet there's this is weird there's nothing here stopping us from going in like there usually is and then the Phyrexian eyes elemental show up and it's the reason they haven't been stopped yet is because Nahiri had
00:55:57
Speaker
completed all of these the elemental beings that usually protect the skyclaves from wanderers and relic looters and so they have to fight off a bunch of these phyrexians and They end up getting aura gets glistening oil in his hand and Which isn't looking good for him and they have this
00:56:27
Speaker
point where Linvala just shines out a bunch of light which buys them time from the Phyrexians to get out before they're surrounded and they're not really sure what's going on anymore and then they get to the center and find Nahiri. Nahiri first talks a little bit about how first she was driven by her
00:56:55
Speaker
trying to do what's best for her home and it was joy of her transformation at first but that wasn't enough and then she puts her anger into the transformation and that wasn't enough and then she spends her grief in it and that gets her almost to where she almost to the point of the plane being um the planar barrier being broken but it's not quite enough
00:57:25
Speaker
For the first time in her long existence, the ancient planeswalker is empty of rage, grief, and pain. Here he has nothing left to give. She has one thing left to offer. So she fuses herself with the keystone and starts draining her own essence into her planar portal device.
00:57:49
Speaker
So then the heroes show up, they start fighting Nahiri. Nahiri throws a bunch of rocks at them and is generally kicking their butts pretty hardcore when everything became really bright.
00:58:09
Speaker
Oil even burns away on Ora's hand and Tazri looks down and says she's shining with incandescent glow, the halo about her neck brighter than ever before. Umunvala is radiating and so they all attack together and Tazri hears a voice from her halo to use it and so she pulls it off and uses a weapon.
00:58:37
Speaker
And then everything begins to fall apart, and the room crumbles, and everybody but Nahiri flies away to safety, or line swings to safety, and the skyclave comes crashing down to Earth, supposedly with Nahiri trapped within, but we get another possible off-screen death for a forexian ice planeswalker.
00:59:04
Speaker
We don't have any confirmation if Nahiri is dead or not, so probably got more to go in aftermath. They did leave a lot of these open-ended, but Zendikar also has a partial victory here, although there's not many people left to fight the Frexians that are already there, even though they stopped the portal from being torn even wider. And that is the side stories. I've gotten through them as quick as I could. There's a lot to cover.
Conclusion & Community Engagement
00:59:35
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed the summaries that I provided. We've had a really good time discussing the stories in our Discord. So if that's something you'd be interested in, please take a look at our link tree and come join us in the Discord to talk about all these wonderful stories. The main set story is absolutely fantastic. We will be back soon with an episode that covers those and just the
01:00:05
Speaker
The Veraska story was a real tearjerker, and I hope you've read all of them, but if you can't read all of them, read that one and read Family Game Night. It's well worth your time. And with that, I'm going to say thank you for listening.
01:00:26
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed the Sliver Lore podcast. I will have all kinds of facts about slivers in the future. And, you know, if Phyrexia can't win because the hive mind is too strong for them. So, or maybe we'll just be grateful we're not getting any Phyrexia nice slivers because that would be terrifying. Thank you and have a good night.
01:00:50
Speaker
And that's our show for today. You can find all of the hosts on Twitter for now. Hobbs can be found at HobbsQ, Tay can be found at Tayatransends, and Alex can be found at Mel underscore chronicler. Feel free to send us any questions, comments, thoughts, hopes, and dreams to the Goblin Lord pod on Twitter, or email us at goblinlordpodcast at gmail.com.
01:01:12
Speaker
If you would like to support your friendly neighborhood gobsugs, our link tree can be found on our Twitter account and in the description of today's show. This has everything from various discount codes to the link for our Patreon. The music for today's show was by Wintergotten, who can be found at vintergotten at bandcamp.com. The art was done by Steven Raphael, who can be found at stevereffel on Twitter. Goblin Lore is proud to be presented by Hipsters of the Coast as part of their growing forthos content.
01:01:40
Speaker
Check them out on Twitter at hipsters MTG or online at hipstersofthecoast.com. Thank you for listening and remember goblins like snowflakes are only dangerous in numbers.